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A MODERN SCHOOL 



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A MODERN SCHOOL 



BY 



PAUL H. HANUS 

PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY AND ART OF TEACHING 
IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY 



m^ fork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1904 

All rights reserved 



v^\\' 



LIBRA KY of CONC-iRESS 
Tyvfc Copies Received 

FEB 15 1904 

'n Copyright Entry 



Copyright, 1904, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up, electrotyped, and published February, 1904. 



J. S. Cashing & Co, — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



PREFACE 

This book is published with the hope that it 
may interest the general reader as well as the 
professional student and teacher. The book en- 
deavors to set forth the scope and aims of a 
modern school, more particularly of a secondary 
school, and the conditions essential to its highest 
efficiency. The last chapter offers some testi- 
mony on the working of the elective system, — 
a contemporary question of great importance to 
both schools and colleges, — but the testimony 
offered pertains only to the college. 

The first chapter, which gives its name to the 
whole book, deals specifically with the central 
theme; and in it I have endeavored to extend 
and strengthen conceptions already set forth in 
certain portions of an earlier book, " Educational 
Aims and Educational Values." Where it has 
served my present purpose, I have occasionally 
used the language of the earlier presentation. 



VI PREFACE 

The next seven chapters contain a fuller treat- 
ment of certain topics than was appropriate or 
expedient in the first chapter, and discuss also 
the internal and external conditions which seem 
to me essential to a high degree of success in 
the work of any school. 

Thus, Chapter II, by means of a brief his- 
torical survey of the development of American 
secondary schools, supports the contention that 
no public school can survive and prosper that 
does not offer equal opportunities to all who 
contribute to its support; Chapter III similarly 
contends that, next to adequately comprehensive 
instruction, the elective system, and complete 
articulation of the secondary school with the 
lower grades are natural and rational means for 
making the secondary school serve impartially 
the needs of all; Chapter IV describes a strong 
contemporary tendency toward a six-year pro- 
gramme (" course ") for all public high schools, 
and toward regarding that programme as a part 
of a well-articulated scheme from the primary 
school through the college, — a tendency which 
has already been approved in the preceding 
chapters; Chapters V and VI set forth the 



PREFACE Vll 

responsibilities of the individual home and of the 
community as well as of teachers and adminis- 
trative officers in the practical endeavor to make 
the school serve the ends for which it exists ; 
Chapter VII urges the necessity of organizing 
contemporary educational experience in order to 
bring the testimony of experience to bear in 
effective fashion on the solution of educational 
problems, and Chapter VIII emphasizes the 
help the university can give in the training of 
teachers, — both matters of serious import to all 
who are interested in making the school a pro- 
gressively efficient instrument of education. 

Here and there the reader will find occasional 
repetitions. These are due mainly to the fact 
that the several chapters were written (and all 
but two of them published, although not in their 
present form) as independent articles in the peri- 
odicals named below^; but the repetitions have 
been allowed to remain because they seemed to 
me to serve a distinct purpose in their present 
context. 

My thanks are due the Educational Review, 
the Popular Science Monthly, the International 
Monthly (now Quarterly), the Forum, the Har- 



viii PREFACE 

vard Monthly, and the Harvard Graduates Maga- 
zine for permission to print as chapters of this 
book the articles or portions of articles referred 
to above, which appeared in their columns at 
various times from 1899 to October, 1903. 

PAUL H. HANUS. 

January, 1904. 



CONTENTS 
I 

PAGE 

A Modern School 3 

II 

The Academy and the Public High School ... 43 

III 
Two Contemporary Problems in Education ... 71 

IV 
A Six-year High School Programme .... 99 

V 

The School and the Home . . . . . .113 

VI 
Our Faith in Education 155 

VII 

Obstacles to Educational Progress . . . .211 

ix 



X CONTENTS 

VIII 

PAGE 

Education as a University Study and the Profes- 
sional Training of College-bred Teachers . .251 

IX 
Graduate Testimony on the Elective System . . 287 



A MODERN SCHOOL 



A MODERN SCHOOL 

The education demanded by a democratic so- 
ciety to-day is an education that prepares a youth 
to overcome the inevitable difficulties that stand 
in the way of his material and spiritual advance- 
ment ; an education that, from the beginning, pro- 
motes his normal physical development through 
the most salutary environment and appropriate 
physical training; that opens his mind and lets 
the world in through every natural power of ob- 
servation and assimilation; that cultivates hand- 
power as well as head-power ; that inculcates the 
appreciation of beauty in nature and in art, and 
insists on the performance of duty to self and to 
others ; an education that in youth and early man- 
hood, while continuing the work already done, 
enables the youth to discover his own powers 
and limitations, and that impels him through oft- 
repeated intellectual conquests or other forms of 

3 



4 A MODERN SCHOOL 

productive effort to look forward to a life of habit- 
ual achievement with his head or his hands, or 
both ; that enables him to analyze for himself the 
intellectual, economic, and political problems of 
his time, and that gives the insight, the interest, 
and the power to deal with them as successfully 
as possible for his own advancement and for social 
service ; and, finally, that causes him to realize 
that the only way to win and to retain the prizes 
of life, namely, wealth, culture, leisure, honor, is 
an ever-increasing usefulness, and thus makes him 
feel that a life without growth and without service 
is not worth living. 

That is to say, the education demanded by 
democratic society in modern times must be a 
preparation for an active life. Now, the only 
real preparation for life's duties, opportunities, 
and privileges is participatioii in them, so far as 
they can be rendered intelligible, interesting, and 
accessible to children and youth of school age ; 
and hence the first duty of all education is to pro- 
vide this participation as fully and as freely as 
possible. From the beginning, such an education 
cannot be limited to the school arts — reading, 
writing, ciphering. It must acquaint the pupil 



/ 

A MODERN SCHOOL 5 

with his material and social environment, in order 
that every avenue to knowledge may be opened 
to him, and every incipient power receive appro- 
priate cultivation. Any other course is a post- 
pone^neiit of education, not education. Such a 
postponement is a permanent loss to the individual 
and to society. It is a perversion of opportunity, 
and an economic waste. 

We have but lately learned this lesson. We 
have learned that reading, writing, arithmetic, and 
English grammar — the school arts — constitute 
only the instruments of an elementary education 
and not education itself. To concentrate a child's 
attention on the school arts during eight or nine 
years is to exaggerate their importance, is to 
regard them as an end in themselves, instead of a 
means to an end. It is true the school arts must 
be learned : the pupil's later progress will depend 
largely on his command over oral, written, and 
printed speech, but it does not require eight or 
nine years of almost exclusive devotion to the 
school arts to acquire this command. Such ex- 
clusive devotion to the school arts cuts the pupil 
off from the very education we are aiming at, 
namely, preparation for life interests through par- 



6 A MODERN SCHOOL 

ticipation in them. Eight or nine years spent on 
the school arts together with book geography and 
a little United States history have usually left the 
pupil at about fourteen years of age without a 
permanent interest in nature, or in human in- 
stitutions and human achievements, whether in 
the field of literature, science, and art, or in the 
industrial, commercial, and political life of his 
time ; and, what is worse, without much inclina- 
tion to acquire such interest by further study. 

This is the natural result of an attempt to pre- 
pare for life without using life's opportunities as 
the source and means of such preparation. Ac- 
cordingly we have changed our plan. Through 
elementary natural science we are bringing 
nature into the schoolroom and we go out to 
meet it ; we bring literature, history, civics, art, 
manual training, and an elementary study of 
industry and commerce into the school as * a 
means of preparation for life, instead of " pre- 
paring " our pupils for contact with these sources 
of inspiration, guidance, and training, in an in- 
definite future. We have learned that a child 
should know how to read and write by the end of 
the third school year, ue, at about nine years of 



A MODERN SCHOOL 7 

age; that in about five years (by eleven years 
of age) he can learn all the arithmetic he needs 
for the ordinary affairs of life and for further 
progress in mathematics ; and that during the 
rest of his elementary school training the pupil's 
progress in the school arts should be incidental 
to his pursuit of other subjects. 

That is to say, we have learned that elementary 
or pre-secondary education, should provide the 
most salutary environment for the pupil, and pro- 
mote his normal physical development through 
appropriate training ; it should stimulate and 
gratify curiosity in every field of worthy human 
activity, and utilize this curiosity both for the 
acquisition of knowledge, and for the develop- 
ment of permanent interest in and power over 
this knowledge; it should acquaint the pupil 
with his duties and his privileges as a tem- 
porarily dependent member of society, and pro- 
mote the development of habits of thought and 
conduct in harmony with his growing insight. 
At about the age of twelve or thirteen, the 
period of secondary education should begin. 
This brings me to the question I am to dis- 
cuss, namely, What is the function of a modern 



8 A MODERN SCHOOL 

secondary school, and how should it be organ- 
ized and administered to discharge this func- 
tion satisfactorily ? 

This question must be answered both for the 
individual and for society ; i,e, we are to ask what 
should a modern secondary school do for the 
individual as an individual; and at the same 
time, how can it meet the legitimate demands of 
society ? It is clear that the needs of the indi- 
vidual and of society are but different aspects of 
the same fundamental need. Individuals are to 
be made responsive to the varied interests of 
life, and to acquire a command over them. But 
society demands that the knowledge and power 
of individuals shall conduce to the general wel- 
fare ; that each individual shall not only be wise 
and good, but that he shall be wise to some pur- 
pose, be good for something; that a man's knowl- 
edge, power, and character shall not only afford 
him personal satisfaction, but that they shall be 
available for social service. In the following dis- 
cussion, these two aspects of the function of the 
modern school will be kept in mind throughout, 
and, in general, no attempt will be made to 
keep them distinct. But it may conduce to 



A MODERN SCHOOL 9 

clearness if we consider them separately, at the 
outset. 

First, then, how may the school meet the le- 
gitimate demands of society ? The school is the 
institution set apart by society for the education 
of children and youth. Remembering that edu- 
cation means preparation for life's worthy inter- 
ests and activities through participation in them., 
I answer that a modern school can meet the 
legitimate demands of society only by adapting 
its aimxS, means, and methods to the changing 
needs of a progressive civilization. This is true 
whether the school is supported by public funds 
or by private generosity and fees. Such adapta- 
tion is, indeed, the only condition on which any 
human institution can survive and prosper. No 
human institution, and, in particular, no school 
can flourish in any age unless it conspicuously 
promotes the material or the spiritual interests of 
men as then understood — and it does not de- 
serve to. The proof of this statement is afforded, 
if proof is needed, by the history of secondary 
schools in the United States. 

I have pointed out elsewhere that our secon- 
dary schools originated in Massachusetts, as col- 



10 A MODERN SCHOOL 

lege preparatory schools ; that, as such, they 
served, from the beginning, the educational needs 
of only a limited portion of the community, since 
their aims and the scope of their work were tech- 
nical — designed to provide the necessary pre- 
collegiate training of clergymen ; that this 
technical character of the schools, in spite of 
the fact that the narrow curriculum, consisting 
only of the elements of Latin and Greek and 
later a little mathematics, comprised the ele- 
ments of liberal culture, as then understood, 
could not, alone, permanently hold the support 
of the majority of the community; that even 
as preparatory training for clergymen, it grad- 
ually possessed a diminishing value to the 
whole community, since the growth of liberality 
in religion pointed to the possibility of many 
roads to salvation and to the real service of God, 
to say nothing of the gradually diminishing 
lustre of the clergyman's calling, and his de- 
clining influence in secular even more than in 
spiritual affairs; that, meanwhile, the whole 
community necessarily felt the steadily increas- 
ing pressure of comprehensive and imperative 
secular interests for which the school made no 



A MODERN SCHOOL II 

direct provision whatever, and, also, the harass- 
ing burdens laid upon it by poverty, struggles 
with the wilderness, and conflicts and wars with 
the Indians, and, later, the great struggle for 
independence ; and that, owing chiefly to these 
causes, together with the rise of the academies 
and the establishment of the district system, the 
town grammar school — the public secondary 
school — declined, until it seemed likely to die 
out, save in a few of the largest towns of the 
Commonwealth.^ 

At the same time, I tried to show that when, 
through private initiative and private generosity, 
the New England academies arose to take up 
the work of preparation for college which the 
Latin grammar schools had failed to perform, 
they clearly demonstrated the possibility and 
the wisdom of providing also, at the same time, 
a secondary education adapted to the special 
needs and the briefer educational careers of 
non-collegiate pupils of both sexes ; that this 
demonstration gradually enabled secondary edu- 
cation to win widespread recognition, as pos- 
sessing distinct functions of its own, whatever 

1 Chapter II. -The Academy and the Public Hio;h School." 



12 A MODERN SCHOOL 

the future career or future educational oppor- 
tunities of the pupils might be ; and that the 
interest in public secondary education, thus 
extended and enriched, gradually gathered the 
necessary strength to overcome the indifference 
and most of the opposition on the part of the 
general public, and ultimately brought about, 
during the years from 1826 to the present 
time, the enthusiastic support of our public 
high schools as we know them to-day. 

In other words, I have tried to show that 
although this country, through the Common- 
wealth of Massachusetts, was early committed 
to the duty of maintaining secondary schools 
supported partly or wholly by local taxes, 
it took nearly tw^o hundred years for the com- 
munities of Massachusetts to really accept the 
duty they had recognized from the very be- 
ginning ; and this duty was accepted then 
only because, meanwhile, a new conception of 
the scope and meaning of public secondary 
education had been gradually evolved. 

So much for the influence of conformity or 
want of conformity to the contemporary demands 
of society on the permanence and prosperity of 



A MODERN SCliOOL 1 3 

the school. It is equally true that unless the 
school meets the needs of the individual, unless 
it promotes conspicuously his development as 
an individual he Vv-ill turn from it with dissatis- 
faction as soon as he becomes avv^are of the 
discrepancy betvreen his needs and the opportu- 
nities which the school affords for meeting 
them. And this is particularly true of the 
secondary school and the college, because the 
pupil is then old enough to measure their influ- 
ence on his expanding and developing interests, 
needs, powers, and duties. 

It need hardly be pointed out, therefore, that 
the period of secondary education is extremely 
important. The years covered by it say from 
the pupil's thirteenth to his nineteenth or twen- 
tieth 3'ear, mark the transition from early child- 
hood into later childhood and youth : the period 
during which the child learns to put away child- 
ish things and to appreciate the interests and 
purposes of men ; to find his place in the social 
whole, and to realize the interdependence of 
public and private interests. It is the period 
when life aims and life habits emerge distinctly, 
and, under wise direction, becom.e dominant life 



14 A MODERN SCHOOL 

influences ; or when, under adverse circum- 
stances, these aims become atrophied for want 
of proper cultivation, or even perverted through 
false training. In any event, they rapidly de- 
velop stability ; and, so far as they are amenable 
to education, may, therefore, be permanently in- 
fluenced. 

Now, an individual's dominant interests and 
powers wholly determine the kind of work 
he voluntarily engages in, and also the sources 
of his pleasure, and thus, ultimately, wholly 
determine the range and quality of his pro- 
ductiveness and the character of his public 
and private life. To carry forward the work of 
development already begun in elementary edu- 
cation, and so to discharge its duty to the indi- 
vidual, it is, therefore, clear that the secondary 
school should especially promote the discovery a^id 
development of each pupil's dominant interests 
and powers ; and further, that it should seek to 
render these interests and powers subservient to 
life's serious purposes^ and also to the possibility 
of participation in the refined pleasures of life. 

The serious purposes of life are, first, self- 
support; or, when that is unnecessary, some 



A MODERN SCHOOL 1 5 

worthy form of service ; second, intelligent, ac- 
tive participation in human affairs — the inten- 
tion to be one who, while performing his private 
duties and enjoying whatever leisure he may 
earn or deserve, is to Vv^ork with his fellow-men 
for the continuous improvement and happiness 
of his race, his nation, and his own immediate 
community. 

The refined pleasures of life are found in 
the ability to participate with intelligence and 
appreciation in the intellectual and aesthetic 
interests of cultivated men. These pleasures, 
like most of the inspiration to worthy living in 
the pursuit of the serious purposes of life, are 
brought within the reach of men through gen- 
eral culture. 

The important place occupied by secondary 
education in a democratic society is now ap- 
parent. It covers the plastic years of later 
childhood and youth, the years during which 
the youth's mental life is organized and per- 
manently fixed ; and it is the most widely 
available organized social force for ele^^ating, 
refining, and unifying a democratic society. 

It will be seen that the foregoing statement 



l6 A MODERN SCHOOL 

of the function of a modern school comprises 
three classes of aims: namely, vocational aimSy 
social aiins, and culture aims. These three aims 
are, of course, not separable in practice, although 
they can be rarely, if ever, equally influential 
in determining any particular phase of school 
work. Moreover, the only way to realize the 
culture aims, for many pupils, will be the close 
affiliation which the pupils must be led to see 
between these and the vocational and social or 
civic aims. These three aims, then, ought to- 
gether to permeate and underlie all the activi- 
ties of the secondary school. We may, however, 
discuss them separately. 

But what is general culture ? Ever since the 
Renaissance the meaning attached to this term, 
until recently, has been well-nigh restricted to 
acquaintance with the historical culture of the 
race embodied in .the language, history, and 
literature of ancient Greece and Rome, together 
with some knowledge of mathematics ; that is 
to say, general culture has been nearly synony- 
mous with classical scholarship. But a glance 
at modern programmes of study in secondary 
schools and colleges, whether these programmes 



A MODERN SCHOOL 17 

are prescribed or elective, or a moment's reflec- 
tion, will show that the modern idea of general 
culture is much broader than classical scholar- 
ship. It is a truism to say that the range of 
life interests, the problems, and the resources of 
civilization, have increased enormously since the 
Renaissance. While we feel on every hand the 
influence of classical traditions in our modern 
culture, and while, therefore, we can never wish 
to dispense with classical scholarship as an ele- 
ment of general culture, it still remains true 
that a new culture and a new civilization have 
arisen since the Renaissance, and especially 
since the eighteenth century, which have their 
own resources of inspiration and guidance, and 
present their own problems for solution. To be 
ig7iorant of these resources and problems is for 
the '}noder7t man to be out of relation with his 
time, is to miss general cicltttre. 

The process of adjusting ourselves to this re- 
vised and enlarged conception of general cul- 
ture is now going on. The old narrow ideal 
is tenacious of life. It is powerfully intrenched 
in existing programmes of study, and in edu- 
cational traditions ; in particular, it is sustained 



l8 A MODERN SCHOOL 

by collegiate preferences for classical studies 
in secondary schools ; and, lastly and chiefly, it 
is strong by virtue of real achievements in the 
education of many generations of men. But 
alone it can no longer suffice. 

The progress of civilization has brought with 
it new problems, and hence new demands on 
the individual. While it is true, in a sense, 
that no one can study the civilization of Greece 
and Rome without indirectly studying our own, 
because our own civilization is rooted in those 
older civilizations, such study cannot be success- 
fully attempted in the secondary school by 
studying the classical languages themselves. A 
more or less thorough acquaintance with the 
elements of these languages, together with a 
very limited appreciation of small portions of 
say three Latin authors and two or three Greek 
authors, is all that is really accomplished. I 
need hardly insist further (and yet the fact 
deserves emphasis) that an acquaintance with 
the elements of two languages is a very dif- 
ferent thing from an acquaintance with the 
civilizations which those languages express — 
from an appreciation of the thought and institu- 



A MODERN SCHOOL 19 

tions of the people who used those languages. 
Incidentally, through the historical and explana- 
tory notes, an approach to such comprehension 
and appreciation may be gained ; but this can 
be obtained much better in the secondary school, 
by studying the history instead of the languages 
of the nations concerned. 

How clear a comprehension of our civilization 
could a Greek youth of the age of Pericles, 
miraculously transferred to the twentieth cen- 
tury, get from a few pages of General Grant's 
memoirs, Lockhart's "Life of Scott," and two or 
three books of Chaucer's " Canterbury Tales " 1 
Or, how thoroughly would our institutions be 
understood by a young Roman of the Augustan 
age from a few pages of Lord Roberts's " Forty 
Years in India," Macaulay's speeches, and " Para- 
dise Lost " t Or, again, no one thinks of arguing 
that secondary school pupils can best under- 
stand Germany and France and the influence 
of their culture and institutions on our own by 
studying the elements of the German and 
French languages and small portions of the 
writings of say Goethe, Schiller, and Bismarck, 
and of Moliere, Victor Hugo, and Guizot. Such 



20 A MODERN SCHOOL 

a claim would be preposterous. When we wish 
a secondary school pupil to understand France 
and Germany and their influence on our own 
development, we very properly set the pupil 
to studying the history of those nations and of 
our own. And so it should be with Greece and 
Rome : Ancient history, not ancient languages, 
will enable the pupil to understand Greece and 
Rome, and if rightly taught, will help him to 
an intelligent appreciation of the important place 
held by those nations in the development of 
modern civilization. 

But even this, important and necessary as it is, 
is not a direct study of our own age at home and 
abroad. Modern civilization is a new and com- 
plex thing. To be understood it must be studied 
in its present form as well as in its origins. 

To induce pupils who are not going to college 
to spend much time on Greek and Latin in the 
secondary school is, accordingly, in my opinion, 
an economic and educational waste. While the 
pupil is studying Greek and Latin, we must 
bear in mind not only the little he gets, but 
what he does not get, — the vast resources he 
necessarily leaves untouched. 



A MODERN SCHOOL 21 

It seems clear to me, therefore, that although 
secondary school pupils may have pursued the 
classical languages and elementary mathematics 
for several years with diligence and more or less 
success, for most of that great majority who 
never go to college, a secondary education con- 
sisting of Latin and Greek, like the barren ele- 
mentary education that formerly preceded it, 
is a perversion of opportunity and an economic 
and educational waste.-^ 

Such an education has been justified, however, 
on the ground of its disciplinary value. No 
matter whether knowledge, or interest in the 
acquisition of knowledge, or interest in the great 
contemporary concerns of life and some power 
to deal with them, has been acquired or not, the 
mind, it has been said, has received a training 
that will fit it to undertake, with every expecta- 
tion of success, any problems or career v/hatever. 

This view is, however, untenable. It is true 
that all mental training is, to some extent, 
general, just as all physical training is, to some 
extent, general. But we do not expect to make 

^ Compare " Educational Aims and Educational Values " (The 
Macmillan Company, 1899), PP- 116-119. 



22 A MODERN SCHOOL 

a good all-round athlete by restricting his train- 
ing to two or three particular kinds of exercise. 
We know that we must provide appropriate 
exercises for his legs and his arms to develop 
both sets of limbs. Leg exercises alone, or arm 
exercises alone, would do little for the limbs we 
do not exercise. Neither mental nor physical 
power can be cultivated " in general." This 
power is always primarily power to do some 
specific thing, and only power " in general " in 
a very restricted sense. That is to say, power 
cannot be trained, apart from the subject-matter 
on which it is brought to bear. No one would 
be foolish enough to seek to train a physician 
by making him study law, or vice versa. 

Hence it is false to assume that because a 
youth has studied Greek and Latin for several 
years, he has been trained to apply himself with 
vigor and success to any mental problem that 
may be presented to him. The truth is that 
he has been trained primarily to study languages, 
and, in particular, Latin and Greek; and only 
incidentally to exercise his mental powers on 
intellectual problems outside of the field of lin- 
guistic study. 



A MODERN SCHOOL 23 

The first step toward realizing our revised 
conception of general culture through secondary 
education is, therefore, to admit frankly that 
general culture means much more to-day than 
classical scholarship ; that it may, indeed, mean 
something entirely different. The next step is, 
I think, to admit as frankly that classical scholar- 
ship, ix, literary appreciation of the classics, is not 
attainable anyway in the secondary school. As 
was asserted above, what is attainable is a fair 
to good elementary acquaintance with the classi- 
cal languages, which is a very different thing. 
This achievement for many pupils is desirable, 
but, at present, it is not economically attained. 

Now, is it not true that what we value most in 
the classics for all secondary school pupils who 
do not go to college, what we regard as most 
important, is to bring to bear on them the re- 
fining and enlightening influence of Greek and 
Roman thought, whether embodied in ancient 
art, or literature, or institutions, on the thought 
and life of to-day and of all time.? A moment 
ago I indicated my belief that this influence 
can best be realized in secondary education, 
not primarily through an extended study of the 



24 A MODERN SCHOOL 

classical languages, but through a serious study 
of history and art, and I may add through a 
study of translations of the classical literatures 
into the mother-tongue. What secondary school 
pupil can appreciate Homer or Xenophon, Virgil, 
Horace, or Cicero in the original, as he can 
appreciate them in admirable translations ? We 
have begun to recognize the magnificent possi- 
bilities of instruction in the language and litera- 
ture of English-speaking nations for their own 
sake ; why should we not also use the mother- 
tongue to bring the minds of our boys and girls 
into actual touch with the inspiring literatures 
of antiquity ? What they now see " through a 
glass darkly " they would then see " face to face." 
If such study, preceded or accompanied by a 
serious study of the modern languages, be then 
followed by a brief course in one of the classical 
languages, or both of them, during the last year 
or two of the secondary school course, sufficient 
to enable a youth to realize the importance of 
these languages to a full comprehension of the 
history and structure of his mother-tongue, and 
the significance of Latin and Greek in all ad- 
vanced linguistic study, the full educational value 



A MODERN SCHOOL 25 

of the classics for secondary school pupils would 
be economically and fully realized. 

Accordingly, a modern secondary school must 
provide for a serious study of modern subjects — 
physical and biological science ; history (includ- 
ing the history of industry, of commerce, of 
education, of art, and of philanthropy, as well 
as political history) ; government and economics ; 
the literature of the mother-tongue ; modern 
foreign languages ; the elements of the fine arts 
and of the mechanic arts; and the elements of 
commercial training — all adapted to the needs 
of both sexes. Let no one be surprised to see 
manual training for both sexes and the elements 
of commercial training included in the studies 
to be pursued for general culture. All teachers 
are aware that the only way to arouse the minds 
of some pupils lies through "practical studies." 
Some minds are for a time quite inaccessible 
to intellectual pursuits as such. To such pupils 
intellectual pursuits acquire interest and signifi- 
cance only as they are seen to be associated 
with trade, manufactures, or commerce. Mathe- 
matics, natural science, and foreign languages 
acquire significance for many minds only when 



26 A MODERN SCHOOL 

it becomes clear that these subjects underlie 
important phases of industrial or commercial 
life. Undertaken at first because of an interest 
with which they are associated, these subjects 
acquire, under wise guidance, the significance 
that belongs to them as such, and the way to 
general culture lies for a time at least through 
manual and commercial training. 

Only through such programmes can we realize 
the culture aims of modern secondary education ; 
for general culture means the capacity to under- 
stand, appreciate, and react on the resources and 
the problems of modern civilization. These re- 
sources and problems are found in the preserva- 
tion of the health, physical vigor, and material 
well-being of the race ; in natural science ; in 
modern governments ; in modern industry and 
commerce ; in modern literatures and languages 
— the record of the ideals and aspirations of 
the race in modern times; in history, the record 
of the achievements of the race ; and in the art 
treasures of all times. As I have just said, we 
can never wish to exclude from the modern con- 
ception of general culture the ancient classics ; 
but the place to attempt the realization of the 



A MODERN SCHOOL 27 

influence of classical antiquity on modern civili- 
zation through a study of the classical languages 
is, in my opinion, not the secondary school, but 
the college and the university. 

While the needs of individuals and of society 
require comprehensive programmes of studies, 
it is manifestly impossible for any one person 
to compass all the training required for modern 
life. Further, each individual best promotes his 
own development and his capacity for social ser- 
vice by adapting his education to his own tastes, 
capacities, and future needs. Hence, secondary 
education in a democratic society must per- 
mit each pupil to choose his own curriculum. 
Let me not be misunderstood. I would not 
have a child twelve or thirteen years old freely 
choose his courses of study. But I would have 
his training, from his thirteenth year onward, a 
training in choice} 

Accordingly, we require of secondary educa- 
tion 2. flexibility that deliberately cultivates the 
power of choice. To do this is to give free 
play to the right of opportunity, and to cul- 
tivate the habit of independent initiative, so 
1 See below, p. 72 fF. 



28 A MODERN SCHOOL 

important in a democratic societ}^ Flexibility in 
secondary education accordingly means that the 
pupil shall, under certain obvious restrictions, 
choose his own studies in accordance with 
the gradual discovery of his dominant interests 
and consequent future needs ; and that this 
freedom shall lead gradually to his complete 
emancipation from external restraint and guid- 
ance, — that it shall lead to self-direction.^ 

At the same time, intensiveness of pursuit must 
not be lacking. Any subject once undertaken 
must be pursued long enough and earnestly 
enough to make it yield its educational value 
for the pupil within the appropriate limits of 
secondary education ; or to make it clear that 
further pursuit of it would not be profitable for 
him. For most subjects and pupils one school 
year would ordinarily be long enough to reach 
this decision. It is clear, however, that no 
such decision is possible without tactful teachers 

1 The apparent difficulties of administration under such a system 
are not so great that they do not yield readily to wise and deter- 
mined management. It implies, however, the cooperation of the 
entire teaching corps of any school that adopts it. Many interest- 
ing experiments of this sort are, at present, under way in the public 
high schools of the United States. 



A MODERN SCHOOL 29 

whose interest in their pupils is at least as 
great as their interest in the subjects which 
they teach. 

To assert that secondary education should 
minister to vocational aims means, primarily, that 
the school should acquaint the pupil with the 
meaning and the importance of a vocation ; but 
it also means that the school should offer the 
pupil some training that begins the preparation 
for the life pursuit for which his tastes and 
aptitudes especially qualify him ; so that when 
he leaves the secondary school he may enter 
on that pursuit itself, or on further preparation 
for it, with some knowledge of its scope and 
meaning, some knowledge of the underlying 
principles on which success in it depends, and 
some power over its fundamental facts and 
processes. 

This means that, in addition to the purely 
intellectual or academic courses, we should offer 
in every secondary school, whether public or 
private, courses in manual training and com- 
mercial courses, and in some schools courses, 
in agriculture, all of which, together with their 
general educational aims, minister directly to 



30 A MODERN SCHOOL 

vocational and social aims. We provide the 
general literary and scientific training required 
for intelligent participation in a wide range of 
the life interests of to-day. Can any one 
assign a satisfactory reason why we should 
decline to provide the training in the mechanic 
arts, and in the fundamental principles and 
processes of commerce essential to intelligent 
participation in an equally important range of 
contemporary life interest? I cannot. Demo- 
cratic education, that offers equal opportunities 
to all, must, therefore, in my opinion, provide 
as adequately for the vocational aims of future 
artisans, merchants, and farmers as for future 
professional men. 

It has already been intimated that the instruc- 
tion which ministers to culture and vocational 
aims also ministers incidentally and in an im- 
portant sense to social aims. But the social 
aims themselves are too important for all classes 
of pupils to permit us to be satisfied with this. 
These social aims must themselves receive 
special recognition. We justly expect a modern 
school to do its share in arousing interest in, and 
insight into, our institutional life — our munici- 



A MODERN SCHOOL 3 1 

pal, state, and national institutions, our political, 
industrial, commercial, and educational affairs. 
Accordingly, we ask that histor}^ civics, eco- 
nomics — the social studies — shall receive much 
fuller recognition in secondary school programmes 
of study than has been accorded to them hitherto, 
and that these subjects shall not be sundered, but 
be kept in intimate association/ 

We ask that our meagre and inadequate 
courses in history shall really comprise an ele- 
mentary descriptive sociology, and an account of 
the development of the institutions of modem 
society. Instead of consisting chiefly of accounts 
of wars, dynasties, and court intrigue, we ask that 
courses in history shall deal by preference with 
the arts and occupations of peace, with the his- 
tory of industry, of commerce, of scientific inven- 
tions, and, erelong, let us hope, with the history 
of art, education, and philanthropy. In all this, 
righteous wars will have their place ; but the war 
hero, as such, will no longer be the sole or even 
the chief example of moral heroism with which to 

^ For suggestions concerning the teaching of Economics in Sec- 
ondary Schools, see the School Review (Chicago), IV, 604, and V, 
27? 577; ^.Tid. Education (Boston) for January, 1897. 



32 A MODERN SCHOOL 

fire the imagination and arouse the spirit of emu- 
lation of our hero-worshipping and impressionable 
youth. 

But there are other ways in which the school 
can train for citizenship. The school itself, 
through its teachers, may and should become a 
participator in the life of the community. The 
teachers should identify themselves with public 
concerns. If they have a share in promoting 
community interests, small or large as the case 
may be, the life of the community will flow 
through the school, and the meaning of citizen- 
ship, its functions, problems, and privileges, will 
be brought home to the pupils. Again, those 
who have public concerns in charge, the mayor, 
park commissioner, chief of the fire department, 
city engineer, chairman of the school board, or 
the director of some bank, railroad, or factory, 
may be invited to the school, and may, by lectures 
or by informal talks, impart to the pupils an in- 
sight into the civic, commercial, and industrial 
interests amid which they live. Thus, through 
its course of study, through the active participa- 
tion of its teachers in the interests of the world 
outside the school, and by bringing representa- 



A MODERN SCHOOL 33 

tives from that world into the school, the school 
may be made a participator in the social, the 
industrial, the commercial, the civic life of to-day ; 
may afford that comprehension of the duties 
and the privileges of a citizen, which only a 
participation, however limited, is capable of 
affording. 

By implication, this discussion concerns itself 
quite as much with the secondary education of 
girls as with that of boys. But I wish to empha- 
size the need of such special provision for the 
general education of girls as will help them 
to become capable and tasteful managers of 
household affairs. Sewing, cooking, household 
hygiene, and domestic economy, generally, not 
omitting household decoration, certainly deserve 
the attention from girls bestowed by boys on 
manual training in wood and iron. If boys 
should find in a modern school general prepara- 
tion for participation in vocational activities, 
either as actual workers or as directors of workers, 
it is no less important that girls should find in 
the same school their opportunity for intelligent, 
interested, and successful participation in carry- 
ing on or directing household affairs. In both 



34 A MODERN SCHOOL 

cases this vocational training is not to become 
narrow preparation for a trade or for domestic 
service in the restricted sense ; but it is to pro- 
vide the general preparation for vocational activ- 
ity that systematic training in fundamental facts, 
principles, and processes can give. 

At least two important considerations remain. 
We have seen that a modern school must have 
a comprehensive programme of studies to meet 
the demands of modern life, i.e. modern second- 
ary education must possess scope — a scope as 
broad as human interests. We have also seen 
that it is impossible for any one pupil to compass 
the whole of such a comprehensive programme; 
that, considering the relation of his dominant 
interests and capacities to his future usefulness 
and happiness, it is not even desirable that a 
single pupil should attempt to compass the entire 
programme even if he could do so. That is, we 
have seen that a secondary school programme 
should possess flexibility as well as scope; that, 
indeed, it should be as flexible as human capacity 
requires and permits. The questions to be an- 
swered are, therefore, how shall we provide this 
adequate scope, and at the same time adequate 



A MODERN SCHOOL 35 

flexibilit)^ taking into account in both instances 
the pupil's immaturity and ignorance ? 

I think it is impossible to provide a good 
modern secondary education for pupils of ordi- 
nary capacity by means of a programme requiring 
only four years for its completion. Somehow our 
high schools and many academies have attached 
an almost superstitious reverence to this num- 
ber four, as if a secondary education required 
of necessity four years and no more. In con- 
sequence, the pupil is fourteen or fifteen years 
of age before he enters the secondary school. 
To defer the pupil's secondary education until 
he is fourteen or fifteen years old is to lose two 
or three most important and valuable years of 
his life for educational purposes. 

As I have already pointed out, near the be- 
ginning of this chapter, the period of secondary 
education should begin when the pupil is twelve 
or thirteen years of age. This gives us six years 
for the work of the secondary school. With only 
four years there is much driving and crowding 
of the great majority of the pupils. In six years 
all the work that ought to be done can be done 
without danger to health, or the impaired interest 



36 A MODERN SCHOOL 

that inevitably accompanies overpressure. The 
school should be from beginning to end a place 
of serious pleasure. This it cannot be unless the 
pupil has sufficient time to assimilate his acquisi- 
tions. I therefore answer the first question just 
proposed by saying that a secondary education 
of adequate scope and intensiveness requires 
most pupils to devote six years to it. Some 
pupils may be able to do it in five, — a very 
few may get through it in four, but to be adapted 
to the great majority the programme of studies 
should cover six years of substantial work. 

Let us then begin the pupil's secondary school 
career when he is twelve or thirteen years of 
age, with the following studies : English, a 
modern language, history, elementary science 
(chiefly field work), simple Algebra, and construc- 
tive geometry ; and let us add to these chiefly 
intellectual studies, for afternoon occupations, 
appropriate manual training for both sexes, draw- 
ing and the history of art, music, and physical 
training together with plenty of free play in the 
open air; and let us build on this foundation 
a substantial course of study for every pupil in 
the school. We shall have time enough in six 



A MODERN SCHOOL 37 

years to do well what is done, and our first 
problem will be solved/ 

I have still to answer my last question ; 
namely, how shall we make our comprehensive 
programme sufficiently flexible to meet the needs 
of every pupil without overburdening any ? I 
answer, by a wise use of electives. The work 
of the first year is simple enough to be required 
of all pupils. No electives are to be permitted 
in that year, but the teachers and the pupil 
should be on the alert to discover special apti- 
tudes and tastes, and to help the pupil in the 
process of self-discovery and self-development in 
harmony therewith which is to be an important 
result of his whole school career. To prevent 
the harm which might result from the pupil's 
ignorance and immaturity — to guard against 
the possibility of the pupil's cutting himself off 
from an illuminating acquaintance with nature 
and her ways on the one hand, and the histori- 
cal culture of the race, as embodied in books, 
social institutions, and art on the other, some 
of the secondary school pupil's work must be 
prescribed. To insure that training in choice 

^ Compare Chapter IV, ''A Six-year High School Course." 



38 A MODERN SCHOOL 

that was emphasized above, and the best pos- 
sible preparation for complete living in the 
fullest sense of the term, a considerable part 
of the instruction should be offered without 
other restrictions than those of sequence and 
amount. The final questions are, of course, 
what studies shall we prescribe for all pupils, 
and when shall we permit a pupil to discon- 
tinue a study once undertaken ? ^ 

The most serious contemporary obstruction to 
the development of modern secondary education 
in some such way as has been set forth in this 
chapter, has been the unwillingness of colleges 
and universities to recognize non-classical secon- 
dary education, no matter how well done, as 
equal in dignity and solidity to classical education 
for preparatory training. This disparagement by 
the colleges and universities of non-classical 
secondary education .will doubtless continue to 
cast its shadow over the free development of 
modern education for some time to come. Uni- 
versities have always been the strongholds of 
educational conservatism. Nevertheless, a demo- 

^ These questions are answered in Chapter III, "Two Contem- 
porary Problems in Education." 



A MODERN SCHOOL 39 

cratic society must seek some way to overcome 
it. University education and social elevation go 
together. To close the door of the university 
on an aspiring student merely because he has 
not pursued a prescribed set of required studies, 
no matter how good as to quantity and quality 
his pre-collegiate work in other studies has been, 
is to close the door of the highest educational 
opportunity a democratic society can command. 
Fortunately, the universities are gradually ad- 
justing themselves to modern demands in this 
regard ; and it is daily becoming clearer that 
before many years all universities will admit 
that any good secondary education, either with 
or without the classics, is a good preparation for 
college or university education. It is even safe 
to predict, I think, that before many years it 
will be clear to all higher institutions of learning 
that unless they recognize this truth, the main 
line of progress will lead past instead of through 
their doors. 



II 



THE ACADEMY AND THE PUBLIC 
HIGH SCHOOL 



II 

THE ACADEMY AND THE PUBLIC 
HIGH SCHOOL 

The origin of American secondary schools may 
be sketched almost in a sentence, as follows : — 

The Boston Latin School was founded in 1635 ; 
the Roxbury Latin School in 1645. These 
schools naturally resembled, as closely as possible, 
the grammar schools of England with which the 
colonists were familiar. They were, accordingly, 
classical schools. As such they were also, natu- 
rally, college preparatory schools. It is well 
known that in 1647 the Colony of Massachusetts 
Bay decreed that every town of one hundred 
householders should " set up a grammar school, 
the master thereof being able to instruct youth as 
far as they may be fitted for the University." 
That is to say, our public secondary schools 
originated as college preparatory schools. 

In 1647 the colony had been in existence seven- 

43 



44 ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 

teen years. The colonists had planted at least 
forty towns and villages. Industry and thrift 
were beginning to convert the wilderness into the 
abode of civilized man, with its appropriate occu- 
pations, represented by the farm, the shop, the fac- 
tory, and the means of communication and trans- 
portation by land and by sea. Like Boston and 
Roxbury, some other towns were maintaining 
schools and sending boys to college. But there 
was danger lest, in the engrossing and increas- 
ingly successful conquest over the wilderness, 
temporal and material interests should outweigh 
or endanger the conservation and propagation 
of spiritual interests, and that education would 
be neglected. Accordingly, in 1647, when Har- 
vard College had been in existence for eleven 
years, the law was passed which was intended to 
avert this threatened danger, — the law which was 
intended to secure organized means for preparing 
boys for college throughout the colony, for all 
time to come. And this end it has accomplished 
both directly and indirectly with varying success 
from that time to the present day. 

I do not intend to follow in detail the vicissi- 
tudes of our public secondary schools during the 



ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 45 

250 years since that time.^ But it is necessary 
for my present purpose to point out again that 
the law of 1647, with its successive amendments, 
fixed the aim and determined the scope of sec- 
ondary education in this country for nearly two 
hundred years ; and I wish to lay stress on the 
fact that the traditions thus established have 
been a powerful, if not always a helpful, influence 
in American secondary education. 

Although the lavv^ of 1647 was an expression of 
the desires of the colony — especially of the 
clergy and of the governing classes — that lavv^ 
was never, so far as I can ascertain, generally 
effective. Indeed, in spite of the great interest 
in learning and piety so well expressed by the 
writer of " New England's First Fruits," when he 
says that " after building houses and churches, 
providing the necessaries of life, and settling the 
civil government, one of the next things we 

1 Those vicissitudes have been set forth by Mr. George H. Mar- 
tin in his " Evolution of the Massachusetts School System," and 
they have been more recently sketched by the late Dr. Frank A. 
Hill, in his admirable paper, " How far is the public high school a 
just charge on the public treasury?" printed in the Report of the 
Massachusetts Board of Education for 1 897-1 898. (Sixty-second 
annual report.) 



46 ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 

longed for and looked after was to advance learn- 
ing and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to 
leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when 
our present ministry shall lie in the dust " ^ in 
spite of this noble sentiment almost universally 
cherished, the more the population grew and the 
more towns were founded and developed, the 
smaller relatively was the number of towns that 
complied with the requirements of the law ; so that 
in 1 789 a new law freed 1 20 towns from the obli- 
gation resting on them under the law of 1647, but 
it still left this obligation on no towns. The 
decline of the town grammar school continued, 
however, so that in 1824 a new law exempted all 
towns having less than five thousand inhabitants. 
When the new law went into effect only seven 
towns were legally required to maintain other than 
elementary schools — whereas 172 towns would 
have been required to maintain grammar schools 
had the law of 1789 remained in force. These 
seven towns were Boston, Charlestown, Salem, 
Marblehead, Gloucester, Newburyport, and Nan- 
tucket. 

1 These lines are inscribed on one of the gates of the Harvard 
College yard. 



ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 47 

Several of the causes of this decline of the pub- 
lic grammar schools have often been dwelt upon ; 
namely, the inevitable poverty of communities in 
a new State, struggling to maintain themselves 
against many obstacles, among which the conflicts 
with the Indians were not the least ; later the dis- 
turbances and the expenses of the war for inde- 
pendence ; the rise of the academies ; and still 
later (after 1 769) the establishment and develop- 
ment of the district system which disintegrated 
the towns for educational purposes and developed 
the district spirit at the expense of the town 
spirit. 

But there was another cause which increasingly 
affected the fate of the grammar schools as time 
went on. The schools were technical, in a narrow 
sense ; and this in spite of the fact that the narrow 
curriculum covered the elements of general culture 
as general culture was then understood. So that 
the grammar schools really met the educational 
needs of only a limited number of the community, 
namely, of those parents whose children were 
destined for the ministry, or for other " learned 
professions." 

Although all other interests were, at first, and 



48 ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 

for a long time afterward, subordinated to the 
religious interest, it was inevitable that secular 
interests should gradually come to occupy a place 
in the public mind not less important and quite as 
urgent as the religious interest. In the century 
and a half that followed the enactment of the law 
of 1647, a huge task was accomplished by the 
colonists. The frontier had been pushed west- 
ward, towns and cities had grown up, trade and 
industry had increased enormously, the war for 
independence had been fought and won, a 
national consciousness had been gradually devel- 
oped, and international relations had been estab- 
lished with European governments. All these 
internal and external changes of social, industrial, 
and political life gradually developed strong 
and varied interests in secular affairs; the 
hereafter, though impending and inevitable, no 
longer engrossed the interests and attention of 
men. In 1789, and still more in 1824, the clergy, 
though influential, were no longer dominant ; 
secular affairs had assumed a magnitude and a 
complexity which they had never possessed be- 
fore ; and thousands of influential people were 
making them the chief concern of their lives ; 



ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 49 

the minister had become a less important per- 
sonage, and the ministerial career no longer pos- 
sessed its former attractiveness to an ambitious 
youth. 

Under such circumstances a secondary educa- 
tion that was, in its aims and scope, determined 
primarily by the needs of but one calling was, 
naturally, an object of comparative indifference to 
an increasingly large number of persons in the 
growing commonwealth. The changed social 
conditions just sketched demanded a readjust- 
ment of education to contemporary needs. But 
this readjustment was long delayed. The tradi- 
tions of a hundred and fifty years had fixed the 
curriculum. Throughout nearly the whole of 
this period the requirements for admission to 
Harvard College included scarcely anything but 
Latin and Greek. As late as 1 798 Harvard Col- 
lege did not require either arithmetic or geog- 
raphy. The elements of arithmetic and geog- 
raphy were demanded, however, as early as 
1807; and in 18 14 the announcement was made 
that " in and after the year 1 8 1 6 the whole of 
arithmetic would be demanded, and that candi- 
dates presented in and after the year 181 5 must 



50 ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 

have well studied ancient and modern geog- 
raphy." These narrow requirements covered 
what the college deemed essential for entering 
upon higher education, and hence also, by an easy 
inference, owing to the influence of the higher 
education on the lower, what educated people 
believed secondary education, in general, should 
consist of. All else was regarded as incidental, 
if not superfluous ; and hence the " grammar 
schools " taught little else than Latin and Greek 
during the greater part of the time from the 
beginning down to about 1814. 

As has already been intimated, such a nar- 
row secondary education was unprofitable to 
an increasing majority of the growing popula- 
tion, and general apathy toward the town school 
was a natural result. It was only in the largest 
towns, where a considerable number of collegiate 
preparatory pupils were sure to be found, that 
the town grammar school survived. No public 
institution can survive and prosper unless it 
serves impartially the needs of all who contrib- 
ute to its support. Until the town schools were 
organized on such a plan as to meet the wants 
of the non-collegiate as well as the collegiate 



ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 51 

pupils, they did not flourish, and they did not 
deserve to.^ 

1 The histories of Massachusetts towns, and the official town 
records, afford abundant evidence of the difficulty of obtaining 
pupils for the town grammar schools, and of the various devices 
adopted by the towns to evade the law requiring them to maintain 
these schools. I give only two examples, namely, Woburn and 
Worcester. Quotations are from Samuel Sewall's " History of 
Woburn," Boston, 1868, and from William Lincoln's "History of 
Worcester," Worcester, 1862. 

"In 1685 the town [Woburn] having increased indisputably to 
the number of one hundred families or householders, and so being 
obliged by law to set up a grammar school, ' the instructor whereof 
should be able to instruct youth so as to fit them for the college,' 
the selectmen appointed Mr. Sam.uel Carter, probably a son of Rev. 
Thomas Carter, their pastor, a graduate of Harvard College in 1660, 
and then resident in Woburn, to keep a grammar school that year, 
with a salary of five pounds per annum. But, though Mr. Carter was 
doubtless competent to teach such a school, t/iere were no scholars 
to attend it. . . . Likewise, at the same meeting, the selectmen, 
feeling unwilling to expose the town to the penalty of ten pounds 
prescribed by law for neglect to keep a grammar school by towns 
of one hundred famiHes each, and yet reluctant to obligate them- 
selves to pay a master five pounds the second time for doing noth- 
ing (as they seem to have been apprehensive they should have to, 
if they positively engaged to give that sum), again employed Mr. 
Carter to keep such a school in Woburn, in 1686, but promised, 
absolutely^ to give him only thirty shilHngs in pay for that year; 
but that if he should have any scholars they would give him five 
pounds, as they had stipulated to give him five pounds the year 
before." The apprehensions of the selectmen were fully realized ; 
there were no grammar-school scholars in 1686, as there had been 
none in 1685. 

In 1704 a Mr. Bradstreet had agreed to serve as grammar school- 



52 ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 

Meanwhile, another kind of secondary schools 
had arisen through private generosity and private 
initiative, namely, the academies. The first acade- 

master, and the committee who had engaged him reported that he 
had been "personally at Wooburne at the time of Charlestown 
Court," but no scholars presenting themselves, he had returned to 
Andover again. Mr. Sewall remarks : " Here is another striking 
token of the indifference of the people of Woburn for grammar- 
school instruction at the commencement of the last century. But 
why is it specified in the committee's report that Mr. Bradstreet was 
at 'Wooburne at the time of Charlestown Court'? He was doubt- 
less here at that particular time by an understanding with the com- 
mittee, and to answer the same purpose that another teacher, some 
thirty years afterwards, was expected to, who had a consideration 
made him by the town * for standing in (as the records express it) 
Schoolmaster Two Courts,' In both these cases, and in others that 
might be named, the school committee (though men of good charac- 
ter and very respectable standing), wishing to save the town expense, 
and yet avoid a legal presentment, resorted to artifice. In making 
an agreement with a schoolmaster they would stipulate with him 
that he must, by all means, be at V^oburn and keeping school in 
court time, even if he were to be off the very next v/eek, fearing that 
otherwise the Grand Jury, who were the eye of the country, might 
spy out the deficiency and present the town ; and ' that the Justices 
of the Sessions might impose on it a fine of £20 for its default, as 
the law required.' " 

"In 1766 the representative [of Worcester] was instructed to 
endeavor 'that the law requiring a Latin Grammar school be re- 
pealed, and that not more than one such school should be kept in a 
county ; ' and in 1767 to use his exertions ' to relieve the people from 
the great burden of supporting so many schools of this description, 
whereby they are prevented from attaining such degree of English 
learning as is necessary to retain the freedom of any state.' " 



ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 53 

mies in New England were Dummer Academy, 
Massachusetts, founded in 1763, and Phillips 
Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, founded in 
1778. The founding of these two academies was 
soon followed by other foundations of the same 
sort. "By 1840 academies had been authorized 
in 88 towns, though not all of them were actually 
established." The purpose of the founders was 
to provide a means by which young men could 
be fitted for college, and through it for the require- 
ments of public and professional life ; and a/so to 
provide the elements of a liberal education for the 
youth of both sexes, whether they subsequently 
went to college or not. This is plainly shown by 
the list of studies which was included in the acts 
of incorporation : English, Latin, Greek, and 
French languages; writing, arithmetic, and geog- 
raphy; the art of speaking; practical geometry, 
logic, and philosophy ; together with " such other 
liberal arts and sciences as the trustees shall 
direct." 

Every one must gratefully acknowledge the 
great service which the academies have rendered 
to the cause of secondary education in this coun- 
try. When Leicester Academy was founded. 



54 ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 

says Mr. Martin, "there was not in all Worcester 
County an educational institution higher than 
the district schools. The few boys who were 
fitted for college learned their Latin and Greek 
by their own firesides, or as they followed the 
plough, and they recited them to the parish minis- 
ters." The academies gave to these boys the 
opportunities for education which they craved; 
and many of them showed in their subsequent 
careers of private and public usefulness how 
much they had profited by these opportunities. 
Even more than this, the academies kept alive 
and nourished public sentiment in favor of a 
higher standard of popular education than the 
district schools afforded. By keeping before the 
people opportunities for education they undoubt- 
edly stimulated a demand for it, and by satisfying 
that demand, so far as they could, whether their 
pupils went to college subsequently or not, they 
served as the most important means for the dis- 
semination of the elements of general culture, 
until the reaction against the long apathy toward 
public secondary education could gather strength 
enough for an effective revival of public schools. 
The founders of the academies, therefore, de- 



ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 55 

serve the gratitude of all who value intellectual 
interests. But, in another respect, these foun- 
dations were not so beneficial, and this was 
perceived clearly enough at the time. In 1795 
Governor Samuel Adams says, in his inaugural 
address : " It is with satisfaction that I have 
observed the patriotic exertions of worthy citi- 
zens to establish academies in various parts of 
the Commonwealth. It discovers a zeal highly 
to be commended. But while it is acknowl- 
edged that great advantages have been derived 
from these institutions, perhaps it may be justly 
apprehended that multiplying them may have a 
tendency to injure the ancient and beneficial 
mode of education in town grammar schools. 

" The peculiar advantage of such schools is 
that the poor and the rich may derive equal 
benefits from them; but none, excepting the 
more wealth}^ generally speaking, can avail 
themselves of the benefits of the academies. 
Should these influences detach the attention 
and influence of the w^ealthy from the general 
support of the town schools, is it not to be 
feared that useful learning, instruction, and social 
feelings in the early parts of life may cease to 



56 ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 

be SO equally and universally disseminated as 
it has heretofore been ? " He adds, characteris- 
tically, " I have thrown out these hints with a 
degree of diffidence in my own mind. You will 
take them into your candid consideration, if you 
shall think worthy of it." What Governor 
Adams feared we know actually came to pass. 
The dearth of good town schools led to the 
founding of the academies; and the more the 
academies multiplied and prospered, the fewer 
became the town grammar schools. 

Nevertheless, the academies deservedly hold 
an honored place in our educational history. 
We have just seen that for many decades they 
provided the secondary education which the 
towns failed to provide throughout the greater 
part of the colony, and kept alive an interest 
in public secondary education that was in dan- 
ger of extinction. But they did even more than 
this. By the broader courses of study which 
they set up they promoted the revival, in an 
improved form, of the very schools they had 
helped to displace. They conspicuously pro- 
moted the development of an enlarged con- 
ception of secondary education by gradually 



ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 57 

investing the secondary school with the dignity 
and importance of an independent educational 
institution, with functions of its own. Hence 
they not only kept alive public interest in 
secondary education, but helped in a most im- 
portant way to enable that interest to gather 
strength enough to cause the founding of our 
public high schools. 

We have seen that, from the beginning, many 
boys attended the academies who never went to 
college, and yet who valued as a priceless pos- 
session the elements of liberal culture which 
they had there acquired. A year, or even a 
term, in an academy, not seldom stimulated a 
youth to achievements which would have been 
impossible without the inspiring and illuminat- 
ing help which the academy had given him. 
Moreover, many of the academies were equally 
accessible to both sexes ; and this, in an age 
when girls scarcely even dreamed of a college 
education, helped to give to the academy that 
character of an independent educational insti- 
tution with functions of its own which has just 
been referred to. 

Here was a school doing excellent work for 



58 ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 

all who had the necessary means to profit by 
its advantages. Men naturally began to inquire 
why such schools should not be made acces- 
sible to all instead of to only a favored few. 
And very soon the reaction from the long apa- 
thy to public secondary education came ; at 
first quick and sharp, but wavering; then set- 
tling down into the increasingly steady and 
generous support which has made possible the 
extraordinary development of our public high 
schools during the last fifty years. 

" In 1826 towns of four thousand inhabitants 
were required to maintain a first-grade high 
school (practically one with Greek); and towns 
of five hundred families, a second-grade high 
school (practically one without Greek). The 
requirement for towns of five hundred families 
was shortly after repealed. In 1836 it was re- 
stored; in 1840 repealed again; and in 1848 
restored again. In 1891 every town was ordered 
to provide free high school tuition ; if not in a 
high school of its own, then in that of another 
town. To relieve certain towns from the hard- 
ship of this law, the State reimburses their ex- 
penditures for tuition. In 1838, of 43 towns 



ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 59 

required to maintain high schools, only 14 were 
doing so. In 1852 there were 64 high schools; 
in 1866, 156; in 1876, 216; in 1886, 229; to- 
day, 261. In 1898 the legislature abolished the 
distinction between first-grade and second-grade 
high schools, and defined more fully the aims 
and scope of high school instruction. In 1886 
evening high schools were authorized for places 
whose population exceeds fifty thousand. Nearly 
all the high schools are for both sexes and have 
been since 1826."! 

Thus far I have endeavored to show that 
our secondary schools originated as college pre- 
paratory schools; that, as such, they served, 
from the beginning, the educational needs of 
only a limited portion of the community, since 
their aims and the scope of their work were 
technical — designed to provide the necessary 
pre-collegiate training of clergymen ; that this 
technical character of the schools, in spite of 
the fact that the narrow curriculum comprised 
the elements of liberal culture as then under- 
stood, could not, alone, permanently hold the 

^ Sixty-second annual report of the Board of Education (Massa- 
chusetts), 1 897-1 898, p. 381. 



60 ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 

support of the majority of the community ; that 
even as preparatory training for clergymen, it 
gradually possessed a diminishing value to the 
whole community, since the growth of liberality 
in religion pointed to the possibility of many 
roads to salvation and to real service of God ; 
to say nothing of the gradually diminishing lus- 
tre of the clergyman's calling, and his declining 
influence in secular even more than in spirit- 
ual affairs; that, meanwhile, the whole com- 
munity necessarily felt the steadily increasing 
pressure of comprehensive and imperative secu- 
lar interests for which the school made no direct 
provision whatever; and, also, the harassing 
burdens laid upon it by poverty, struggles with 
the wilderness, and conflicts and wars with the 
Indians, and, later, the great struggle for inde- 
pendence ; and that, owing chiefly to these 
causes, together with the rise of the academies 
and the establishment of the district system, the 
town grammar school — the public secondary 
school — declined, until it seemed likely to die 
out, save in a few of the largest towns of the 
Commonwealth. 

I have also endeavored to show that when, 



ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 6l 

through private initiative and private gener- 
osity, the academies arose to take up the work 
of preparation for college which the grammar 
schools had failed to perform, they clearly dem- 
onstrated the possibility and the wisdom of 
providing also, at the same time, a secondary 
education adapted to the special needs and the 
briefer educational careers of non-collegiate pu- 
pils of both sexes; that this demonstration 
gradually enabled secondary education to win 
widespread recognition, as possessing distinct 
functions of its own, namely, that of provid- 
ing the elements of liberal culture and useful 
knowledge, whatever the future career or future 
educational opportunities of the pupils might 
be; and that the interest in public secondary 
education thus extended and enriched gradually 
gathered the necessary strength to overcome 
the indifference and nearly all the opposition 
on the part of the general public ; and ulti- 
mately brought about, during the years from 
about 1826 to the present time, the enthusi- 
astic support of our public high schools as we 
know them to-day. 

That is to say, I have endeavored to shovv' 



62 ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 

that, although this country, through the Com- 
monwealth of Massachusetts, was very early com- 
mitted to the duty of maintaining secondary 
schools supported partly or wholly by local taxes, 
it took nearly two hundred years for the com- 
munities of Massachusetts to accept the duty 
they had recognized from the very beginning ; 
and that this duty was accepted then only be- 
cause, meanwhile, a new conception of the scope 
and meaning of public secondary education had 
been gradually evolved. 

The old conception of public secondary edu- 
cation, the one that had failed, was preparation 
for college through a rigidly prescribed, narrow 
programme of studies. This programme, unless 
followed by collegiate training, was seen to be 
unproductive for most pupils, either as a prepa- 
ration for the duties of life or as a stimulus to 
self-culture. Since only a small number of the 
pupils could go to college, such a secondary edu- 
cation interested relatively few. The new con- 
ception was a share in the elements of liberal 
culture and in useful knowledge and appropri- 
ate mental training for the duties and refined 
pleasures of life through an enlarged and 



ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 63 

flexible programme of studies; this programme 
of studies to be so administered as to be adapted 
to the briefer educational career of the youth 
who had to get what liberal culture he could 
and the best preparation for life accessible to 
him without the help of the college, as well as 
to the longer educational career of the more 
fortunate youth who could go to college. This 
programme was developed by the academies. 
The academies naturally insisted on the superi- 
ority of the traditional classical programme; it 
was duly emphasized in the equipment and 
work of all of them; nevertheless, most of them^ 
offered their additional educational resources to 
all comers of both sexes freely, and so per- 
mitted a pupil to combine some classical train- 
ing with a training in modern subjects, or to 
leave the classical training out altogether, as he 
saw fit. Such an education, whether of short or 
long duration, would be a help and an inspira- 
tion to its possessor. When the public high 
schools multiplied, in accordance with the law 
of 1826 and the laws passed subsequently, this en- 
larged conception of secondary education every- 
where formed the basis of their aims and work. 



64 ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 

Everywhere each school had its EngUsh depart- 
ment as well as its classical department; and 
the example of Massachusetts has been followed 
by the country at large. 

The last 250 years have, accordingly, given 
an enlarged significance to secondary educa- 
tion. During those years, the public secondary 
school has grown into the stature of an inde- 
pendent educational institution with a function 
of its own ; and, at the same time, it has never 
ceased, and, I trust, never will cease, by means 
of at least one of its "courses of study," to be 
closely articulated to the college, whatever the 
arbitrary demands of the college may be. 
How much importance we attach at the pres- 
ent time to this independent function of the 
high school is everywhere apparent. Our con- 
temporary educational literature is full of it; 
and it has found frequent recent and em- 
phatic indorsement by important educational 
associations, and particularly by the National 
Educational Association. In the Report of 
the Committee of Ten on Secondary School 
Studies (1893) we read: "The Committee of 
Ten unanimously agree with the Conferences. 



ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 65 

Ninety-eight teachers, intimately concerned either 
with the actual work of American secondary 
schools, or with the results of that work as 
they appear in students who come to college, 
unanimously declare that every subject which 
is taught at all in the secondary school should 
be taught in the same way and to the same 
extent to every pupil so long as he pursues 
it, no matter what the probable destination of 
the pupil may be, or at what point this educa- 
tion is to cease." And from the Report of 
the Committee on College Entrance ' Require- 
ments (1899) I quote the following: "Many 
high schools find it impossible to offer one or 
another of the subjects required for admission 
to college at present, while they do offer in- 
struction in subjects which there seems to be 
no adequate reason for excluding from the 
category of accepted branches. . . . 

" Resolved, That we recommend that any 
piece of work comprehended within the studies ^ 
included in this report that has covered at least 

1 English, German, French, Latin, Greek, algebra, geometry, trigo- 
nometry, history, civics, economics, physical geography, botany, 
zoology, physics, chemistry. 



66 ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 

one year of four periods a week in a well- 
equipped secondary school, under competent 
instruction, should be considered worthy to 
count toward admission to college." 

Evidence is not wanting that the college, 
also, is adopting this view of the secondary 
school, and that we are nearer than ever before 
to that close articulation of modern secondary 
and higher education which many of us have 
so long hoped for, and which has been so long 
deferred. The modern secondary school has 
gradually widened the historical path leading 
to the college by showing the college that 
there are many ways of preparing for the 
higher culture which it offers. It thus steadily 
increases the facility of the transition from 
school to college, and, consequently, increases 
the number of those who find themselves at 
the end of their school career not only impelled 
to seek a college education, but ready to enter 
on it. 

All this does not mean that the esteem in 
which the college is held has suffered diminu- 
tion. It only means that, first of all, the public 
high schools can and shall be made to serve 



ACADEMY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL 6/ 

the purpose of extending and deepening the 
education obtainable in the pubHc elementary 
schools, at home, as a better preparation for 
the duties and the refined pleasures of life; 
and that the college, wherever it may be found, 
shall serve to carry still farther that better 
" preparation for life " which the high school 
carries as far as it can ; in other words, it 
means that the artificial distinction, once very 
marked, between the two historical functions 
of secondary education, namely, "preparation 
for college " and " preparation for life," is dis- 
appearing. Whether it will wholly disappear 
within a generation or two can only be con- 
jectured; but I think it will. 



Ill 



TWO CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS 
IN EDUCATION 



Ill 



TWO CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS 
IN EDUCATION 

Two of the important problems that the 
contemporary interest in education has brought 
prominently before the public are (i) What 
shall we do about the elective system of 
studies which is daily extending its sway over 
schools and colleges throughout the country ? 
and (2) How shall we bridge the gap between 
the high school and the lower grades ; ix. how 
shall we minimize the waste in the pupil's 
school education and make his entire school 
career serve continuously and progressively- — 
as it should — his gradually expanding inter- 
ests, needs, powers, and duties ? 



It is well known that even those secondary 
schools and colleges which do not recognize 

71 



72 CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 

electives, as such, and cling to "courses of 
study," permit not merely a choice between 
different " courses," but they usually also permit 
substitutions of studies in one " course " for 
studies in another ; so that, really, if not nomi- 
nally, a considerable range of choice, or elec- 
tion of studies, is permitted in most secondary 
schools and colleges nearly everywhere through- 
out the country. 

Both experience and observation seem to 
justify this widespread adoption of the elective 
system, in some form, in secondary schools and 
colleges.^ During the years of secondary school 
and college education, the pupil passes through 
the important stage of adolescence and youth. 
He emerges from childhood to manhood. Dur- 
ing these years, he may be, and should be, led 
to self-revelation, and he should be aided to 
organize his mental life in accordance with his 
dominant interests and capacities, both for 
vocational and extra-vocational activities. After 
an individual's interests have emerged dis- 

^ See, for example, " The Elective System in American Educa- 
tion," by D. E. Phillips, " Pedagogical Seminary," viii, 206 ; " Some 
Results of the Galesburg Plan of Electives," by F. D. Thomson ; 
"School Review/' ix, 13. 



CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 73 

tinctly, all voluntary effort is reserved for his 
preferences ; and that achievement is most pro- 
ductive when it is based on interests and 
capacity, need not be argued. Daily experi- 
ence proves that an individual's dominant 
interests ultimately determine the extent of his 
private and public usefulness and the sources 
of his pleasures — that, in short, they determine 
the richness or the poverty of his life, in the 
broadest sense of those words. 

If this be admitted, the importance of dis- 
covering and cultivating a youth's dominant 
interests is apparent. He should, therefore, 
choose his own curriculum as soon as possible. 
He can learn to choose wisely only by choos- 
ing repeatedly, under guidance, as wisely as 
possible. Hence, although a child twelve or 
thirteen years old should not freely choose his 
own course of study, he is, nevertheless, 
entitled to have his preferences considered in 
the choices which his parents and teachers 
permit him to make. As he grows older, his 
ability to choose wisely should be deliberately 
cultivated, so that usually, by the time he has 
completed his secondary school education — 



74 CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 

rarely before that time — he may be prepared 
to choose his further studies without restric- 
tions. A youth of eighteen or nineteen, who 
has been learning to choose, who has had train- 
ing in foresight for five or six years, is not likely 
to abuse his privileges ; nor is he likely to be 
Ignorant of the importance of wise counsel, nor 
to wish to dispense with it. 

But it may be said that if a youth is 
allowed to choose his own studies, he is not 
trained to " work against the grain." I am 
not sure that I understand the meaning 
attached to this phrase by those who use it. 
But, in my opinion, the only sense in which 
any sane person, in adult life, works "against 
the grain," is when he applies himself to a dis- 
agreeable or even repulsive task for the sake 
of some ultimate end that is intrinsically agree- 
able to him, or recognized as good by him. 
There is no other working against the grain 
worth cultivating. No one, not even an ascetic, 
habitually does disagreeable things for their 
own sake. 

When an adult works faithfully at a dis- 
agreeable task, he does it primarily because it 



CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 75 

is clear to him that his personal interests are 
at stake — that his daily bread, or honor, or 
social elevation, depends on the performance 
of his work or his duty, however disagreeable 
it may be. In other words, there are strong 
extraneous motives, the force of which he can 
appreciate, that cause him to apply himself to 
the uninviting or repelling task before him. 
True, many a man does live his life under 
just such disadvantageous conditions. But it 
is a life of mere drudgery, from which he 
might have been saved if he had learned in 
youth to choose that calling which is in har- 
mony with his dominant interests and capaci- 
ties. His work might then have been hardly 
less a pleasure than his leisure ; and he would, 
of course, have been a more useful member of 
society, and would have earned more leisure, 
because of the increased efficiency of his work. 
But can any one with any knowledge of boy 
nature assert that faithful application to the 
positively and permanently uninteresting can 
be cultivated by extraneous motives, even if it 
were desirable } The motives which appeal to 
the adult are meaningless to the boy. More- 



76 CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 

over, he feels instinctively that consciousness 
was added to the equipment of mankind, in 
the process of human evolution, for guidance, 
and he insists, as long as he can, on using it 
for that purpose. The remote reasons in the 
minds of his governors which apparently weigh 
heavily against the pupil's strong disinclination 
do not and cannot appeal to him as intrinsi- 
cally valid. One can, of course, compel the per- 
formance of disagreeable tasks, and by repetition 
of compulsion one can convince a refractory 
youth that some achievement is always pos- 
sible and necessary, in spite of strong aversion 
to a particular kind of work; But what one 
usually cultivates, under such circumstances, is 
not a growing strength to master difHculties, but 
chiefly the habit of skilful, even of subtle evasion 
— the habit of calculating, not how much one 
can do, but how little one must do. 

Again, the effect of compelling a youth to 
pursue a subject permanently uninteresting is 
pernicious in another way. It cultivates the 
abominable habit of being satisfied with partial 
or inadequate achievement. Permanent lack 
of interest in a given field of work is an indi- 



CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION ^J 

cation of corresponding incapacity ; for growing 
interest and capacity always go together. Un- 
der such circumstances a youth never feels the 
glow of conscious mastery of the subject for 
its own sake ; half-achievement is the result of 
forced, half-hearted endeavor, and both become 
the rule. 

The result may be even worse. To be con- 
stantly baffled undermines one's confidence in 
one's own powers, and ultimately imperils self- 
respect. To force a youth to work " against the 
grain" for its own sake is, therefore, futile, and 
worse than futile; for it not only fails to ac- 
complish its purpose, but actually cultivates the 
evasion of school work, the aversion to school 
work, and, in extreme cases, it may even destroy 
the capacity for work of any sort. Moreover, 
it must not be forgotten that evasion of work, 
aversion to work, and emmi are the fertile soil 
in w^hich all the vices flourish. 

Again, all such efforts to make a youth work 
" against the grain " by the pursuit of permanently 
uninteresting studies are artificial, and wholly un- 
necessary. What we want a youth to acquire is the 
power of overcoming difficulties, and the corre- 



y^ CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 

Spending habit of adequate achievement. This 
power and the corresponding habit are cultivated 
by overcoming difficulties^ not by forced and un- 
successful attempts at overcoming them. Every 
subject affords abundant opportunity for over- 
coming difficulties, and when it is in harmony 
with the pupil's interests and powers, those 
difficulties will be overcome; first, because they 
lie in the way of further progress in a subject 
which the pupil wishes to master; and second, 
because he possesses the requisite natural capacity 
for conquest, because he daily feels the sense of 
achievement — the strongest of all incentives to 
exertion. Hence, conquest may become the 
rule. Through conquest alone comes the habit 
of working in spite of difficulties^ which is the 
kind of working "against the grain" worth 
practising. 

Finally, as was pointed out above, a man's 
life is more significant and richer in every way 
the more his dominant interests and powers 
determine both his serious pursuits and his 
pleasures. The natural preferences of pupils 
during the stage of secondary education should, 
therefore, be heeded, not thwarted. There is no 



CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 79 

other effective way to cultivate the habit of 
" working against the grain," in the only sense 
in which such work is wise. It is no argument 
to say that generations of men have been 
trained to work against the grain under rigidly 
prescribed programmes of study. The sufficient 
reply to such an argument is already contained 
in what has been said about the relative effect 
of extraneous motives in youth and in adult 
life. It may be added, however, that this capac- 
ity, where it exists, has been developed in spite 
of, not because of, the rigid prescription of 
studies. 

Of course, nothing that has been said applies 
to shirking. The shirk deserves no conces- 
sions, and should have no mercy. What the 
pupil has chosen to do, both the home and the 
school must insist that he shall do. 

The question about elective studies is, accord- 
ingly, not " shall we recognize electives ? " That 
question has been answered in the affirmative. 
The question is, " What is the wisest adminis- 
tration of electives in secondary education } " 
While each school is seeking the answer to 
this question in its own way, there is substantial 



80 CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 

agreement on one point: namely, that there 
should be restrictions on the pupil's freedom to 
choose his own curriculum of studies. But 
opinions vary widely as to what these restric- 
tions shall be, and how they shall be adminis- 
tered. 1 hold that these restrictions should be 
few. The fundamental questions are, of course, 
what studies shall we prescribe for all pupils and 
when shall we permit a pupil to discontinue a 
study once undertaken ? 

The experience of teachers who have worked 
under both prescribed and elective systems 
seems to point conclusively to the fact that no 
study, however highly esteemed by parents or 
teachers, will be a real influence in the pupil's 
development, and so contribute to his future 
usefulness and happiness in any important way, 
unless it is, in some degree at least, intrinsi- 
cally interesting to him. Hence, no pupil should 
be required to pursue a study after it is clear 
that it does not appeal to him. Under most 
circumstances one year is enough — and it is 
not too much — to ascertain whether a study 
does, or does not, really challenge a youth's 
interest and capacity. Hence, to answer the 



CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 8 1 

second of the two questions just proposed, first, 
I should say that, in general, after a pupil has 
made his choice of a study, he should be re- 
quired to pursue it for a year. 

As to the other question, namely, What studies 
shall be prescribed for all ? it seems to me clear 
that no youth should be allowed, through ignorance 
or caprice, to cut himself off from any one of the 
great sources of human inspiration and guid- 
ance. If we could rely on having a varied 
and substantial programme of studies during 
the pre-high-school years, some of the pre- 
scriptions I am about to suggest might well 
be omitted; notably the mathematics. But as 
long as the pre-high-school grades, even those 
immediately preceding the high school grades, 
cannot yet be seriously regarded as the begin- 
ning of high school education in most school 
systems — among them some of the best in the 
country — in order to guard against the blind- 
ness of ignorance when pupils come up to the 
high school, it is necessary to insist on a con- 
siderable amount of prescription. 

I would, therefore, prescribe for every non- 
collegiate pupil, during his secondary school 



82 CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 

career, at least one year of the study of his 
mother-tongue, giving most of the time to Ht- 
erature with its inspiring and guiding influ- 
ences; at least one year of science, so taught 
as to show the pupil how man is coming to 
master nature by underst'anding her, and at the 
same time, also, how completely one who knows 
nothing of natural science is cut off from par- 
ticipation in some of the most interesting, pro- 
found, and far-reaching problems of contemporary 
thought ; one year of a modern foreign language, 
through which he may learn to appreciate fully 
his mother-tongue, and through which at the 
same time he may widen his mental horizon so 
as to include ultimately the literature, the insti- 
tutional life, the ideals — in a word, the intellec- 
tual resources of another modern nation besides 
his own ; one year of history — English or 
American — so taught as to show the meaning 
of democratic institutions and the means of 
safeguarding and improving them. If American 
history is prescribed, I would have it so taught 
as to fill the pupil's mind with the most im- 
portant truths about what his country is, and 
what it really stands for; not glossing over its 



CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 83 

past and present defects and unduly exalting its 
merits, but bringing into strong relief our 
worthiest political ideals, and laying special em- 
phasis on the lesson that the approximate reali- 
zation of worthy political ideals has always been 
and still is possible only through the intelligent 
participation of citizens in public affairs, not 
primarily as ofhce-holders, but still more as 
alert and active private citizens ; to do this, not 
so much by didactic instruction or exhortation, 
as by the inevitable logic of events skilfully 
portrayed. I would prescribe, further, one year 
of the history of industry and commerce, together 
with the elements of civics treated historically, 
that the pupil may see the interdependence of 
material prosperity and social stability, and 
learn to look upon contemporary social and 
economic problems in the light of their histori- 
cal evolution; one year of elementary algebra 
and geometry that may open his mind to one 
of the most useful, the most profound, and to 
some minds most fascinating systems of thought 
which man has developed — a result which can 
never be expected to follow from what the 
pupil has learned in the narrow field covered 



84 CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 

by arithmetic ; one year of drawing and manual 
training that will introduce the pupil, on the 
one hand, to the elements of the fine arts, the 
decorative arts, and the mechanic arts, and 
on the other, lead him to a just appreciation of 
the importance of all three in ministering to 
the esthetic and the material interests of men, 
and help him to adjust his own relation to 
them in thought and deed.^ 

That is to say, under existing conditions, I 
mean with the existing unsatisfactory pre-high- 
school programme of studies, still unsatisfactory 
in spite of the well-nigh universal and decid- 
edly creditable recent attempts to improve it, 
it seems to me wise to prescribe for every high 
school pupil at least one year of the language 
and literature of his mother-tongue ; one year of 
American or English history (chiefly political); 
one year of English and American economic 
history and civics, or, when possible, one year 
of elementary political economy ; one year of a 
modern foreign language ; one year of science 

1 Of course I do not mean to imply that these results can be fully 
realized in a single year's instruction in the subjects named in this 
paragraph. I mean that these results are to be aimed at, whatever 

the duration of the instruction may be. 



CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 85 

(physical geography, or botany and zoology) ; 
one year of algebra and geometry (together); 
one year of drawing and manual training ; each 
of these subjects with a time allotment of from 
three to four periods a week.^ This prescribed 
work includes subject-matter comprising about 
one-third of all the work a pupil of ordinary 
capacity should be required to do during four 
years of the ordinary high school programme, 
chosen from each of the great divisions of 
human culture. It thus affords a reasonably 
satisfactory basis for the guidance of pupils, 
teachers, and parents, in the choices which they 
make or advise in harmony with the pupil's 
real tastes and capacities. It seems to me, 
therefore, a safe basis for the administration of 
the elective system in our secondary schools. 

^ I suggest the following time schedule for these studies : Eng- 
lish, 3 ; EngUsh history, or American history, 3 ; economic history 
and civics, or political economy, 3 ; modern language, 4 ; physical 
geography, or botany and zoology, 4 ; algebra and geometry, or 
algebra or geometry, 4; manual training and drawing, 4. (The 
numbers mean so many exercises per week.) 



86 CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 

II 

The other problem which I wish to discuss is 
closely connected with the problem of electives. 
It is, in effect, how shall we overcome the persist- 
ence of the artificial separation of the high school 
from the rest of the school system — a separation 
that sometimes almost amounts to isolation ? 

Reference was made above to the unsatis- 
factory condition of our pre-high-school education 
in spite of the widespread endeavor to improve 
it. The grammar school is still emphasizing, 
too much, a very large remnant of the old for- 
mal curriculum. Arithmetic, English grammar, 
and political geography are still looked upon 
as the solid studies of the later years of the 
grammar school, as they were before the days 
of enriched programmes. The work in foreign 
languages, algebra, geometry, history, elementary 
science, manual training, where any or all of 
these studies are recognized at all, is still looked 
upon in most school systems as a new and more 
or less ornamental addition to the real work of 
the grammar school.^ 

1 The reluctance of some communities and some teachers to aban- 
don the old time grammar school studies in the later years of the 



CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 8/ 

In other words, we have not yet taken the 
newer studies in the grammar school programme 
seriously. Hence, as I have already mentioned, 
most high schools do not regard the work done 
in these studies in the lower grades as really 
done ; and so, in spite of the congested grammar 
school programme, due to the insertion of the 
new studies without elimination, root and branch, 
of the old ones, from the last years of the 
grammar school, the high school still assumes 
— and probably in most cases justly — that 
everything below the high school is still chiefly 
a drill in the school arts, just as it used to be ; 
and that such beginnings of a real education 

grammar school programme, and to substitute for them the studies 
that constitute a real education, is largely due to the mistaken belief 
that the really unpractical and purely technical details of arithmetic 
and Enghsh grammar, and the statistical geography, that still con- 
sume so large a share of the pupil's time and attention in the last 
two or three grammar grades, possess more practical utility and 
have more educational value than good courses in history, literature, 
foreign language, elementary algebra and geometry, manual train- 
ing, sewing, and cooking. It should be said, also, that many prin- 
cipals and superintendents doubtless hesitate to adopt the improved 
programme because they have not in their corps a sufficient number 
of properly equipped teachers — teachers who can be assigned to teach 
both in a given high school and in the upper grades of one or more 
grammar schools in its vicinity. But such teachers are not hard to 
find. Our colleges are sending them forth by the score every year. 



S8 CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 

as have been attempted in the lower grades 
are not really beginnings — they are only tri- 
fling with high school subjects ; and that, conse- 
quently, all those subjects must be begun over 
again. The result is that the separation of the 
high school from the lower grades — the " gap," 
as it is often called, between " the grades " and 
the high school — still exists, very much as it 
always has. 

This curious break, in what is intended to be 
a thoroughly unified educational scheme, is such 
a contradictory phenomenon, in spite of its seri- 
ous reality, that it would be incomprehensible if 
it had not followed naturally from the different 
origins of our elementary and our secondary 
schools. As we have seen, our secondary schools 
originated as (Latin) grammar schools, i.e, as 
college preparatory schools, designed for a par- 
ticular social clas^, and hence possessing no 
essential articulation with the public elemen- 
tary schools. The academies, although not class 
schools to the same extent as the older " grammar 
schools," still concerned themselves little, if at all, 
with the elementary education of their pupils. 
When the high schools were founded on the 



CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 89 

combined model of the " grammar school " and 
the academy, these traditions of secondary edu- 
cation were perpetuated — below the high school 
not a real education, only a preparation for edu- 
cation ; education itself was deferred to the high 
school. Hence, the gap between the high school 
and the lower grades — the artificial isolation of 
the high school from the lower grades, which 
still persists in spite of our recent and contem- 
porary endeavor to bring them together. 

Nevertheless, the remedy is really not difficult 
to apply. We have already made so much prog- 
ress that the final steps ought not to be hard 
to take. We shall take them when we discon- 
tinue elementary English grammar as a distinct 
study, at the end of the sixth grade, and begin 
there a modern foreign language; when we cut 
out all the arithmetic in and after the seventh 
grade, and substitute elementary geometry 
and algebra ; when we similarly cut out most 
of the political geography in and after the 
seventh grade, and gradually transform all our 
nature study during the same time into ele- 
mentary natural science. When we seriously 
make these and some other equally important 



90 CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 

changes, and add them to the other improve- 
ments already substantially accomplished in our 
contemporary pre-high-school grades, we shall 
bridge the gap between elementary and second- 
ary education ; and the artificial isolation of the 
high school in a system of which it is really 
intended to be an integral part will be outgrown. 
It would be interesting to discuss the effect 
of these suggested changes more at length, but 
I content myself with touching only one of them. 
It will be noticed that I have spoken of a modern 
language, not of Latin, as a suitable foreign lan- 
guage for pre-high-school pupils. The reasons for 
this suggestion are not far to seek. Latin is a 
difficult language, and when begun at an early 
age, and without any previous study of a foreign 
language, is not economically acquired. By eco- 
nomically, I mean the minimum expenditure of 
time and energy required to make substantial prog- 
ress in the language. This is becoming apparent 
in the very stronghold of classicism itself — in 
Germany. It may not be generally known that 
during the past few years a very interesting ex- 
periment has been in progress in Germany ; 
namely, the experiment of cutting off the first 



CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 91 

three years of the nine years devoted to Latin 
in the gymnasium and real gymnasium, and 
substituting instead three years of French. Some 
years ago there were in Germany twenty-six gym- 
nasiums and real gymnasiums, in which this ex- 
periment was in progress. Now, I am told, there 
are more than seventy. The head masters of these 
schools were unwilling, in some cases that came 
under my observation, to express any opinion 
on the probable results of this experiment until 
more time had elapsed. The experiments were 
begun not long after the celebrated conference' 
on secondary education, called by the emperor 
in 1890. But others were emphatic in their 
belief that the experiment would be a success 
in the interests of Latin itself ; and it was chiefly 
on this alleged ground that the experiment had 
been permitted at all. I have no doubt that 
the results will justify the expectations enter- 
tained by its promoters. In this country one of 
our best known classical schools ^ has substituted 
for some years past, for the first year of a six-year 
course in Latin, a year of French ; and there is 
no disposition whatever to return to the former 
regime. 

1 The Roxbury Latin School. 



92 CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 

A further argument for deferring Latin until 
after a modern language has been studied could 
be derived from the analogy of the very suc- 
cessful courses in elementary Greek now estab- 
lished in several American colleges — courses in 
which at least two, and sometimes three, years 
of " preparatory " Greek are done in a single 
year; and the work is done much better than 
it can be done in the preparatory school, on 
account of the greater maturity of the pupils, 
and their previous linguistic training. All this 
points to the wisdom of deferring Latin to the 
later secondary school years in the interests of 
the Latin. 

But there is another even stronger reason ^ why 
a modern language, instead of Latin, should be 
begun in the grammar school. Of course, I 
have in mind a serious study of the modern 
language — as serious as if the language were 
Latin, and with a similar expectation of building 
on it a superior language training later on. 
These reasons are, first, that in two or three 
years a serious study of a modern language will 
yield a result in general culture infinitely superior 
to what can be derived from Latin at the same 



CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 93 

age — ix, it will give the pupil the power to 
enjoy and to use another literature besides his 
own, and especially a literature that he can use 
and enjoy, whether he ever goes to school 
another day or not ; and this cannot be asserted 
of Latin. It is hardly necessary to remind the 
reader that most pupils do not enter the high 
school ; and hence, unless they have an oppor- 
tunity to study a foreign language in the grammar 
school, they do not get it at all. 

Other arguments for such sequence of our 
language courses as I am pleading for are near 
at hand ; e,g, a pupil's knowledge of, and com- 
mand over, his mother-tongue gains enormously 
through the study of a foreign language — a 
modern language is as good for this purpose, 
for young pupils, as Latin, or even better than 
Latin; and a modern language in itself may 
have a commercial value which Latin never 
has, except, at present, for some teachers. 

Now, if we had two or three pre-high-school 
years of a modern language, followed by at least 
one year — the first high school year — of another 
modern language in the high school, and this fol- 
lowed by three years of Latin and two of Greek 



94 CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 

for those who care for the ancient languages, who 
can doubt that our present somewhat meagre 
achievements in the classics in the high school 
would be greatly increased in quantity and that 
they would be vastly better in quality ? This is 
the sensible language course of the future for 
those who study the classics in the high school, 
as I conceive it, when the high school is com- 
pletely articulated to the grammar school. When 
that time comes I think, also, that we shall have 
precisely inverted the relative emphasis we now 
place on the classics and on the modern lan- 
guages in pre-collegiate education for collegiate 
pupils. We shall follow the pre-high-school 
modern language courses by substantial high 
school courses in those languages, and so con- 
tinue the real education of the pupil begun in 
the grammar school, instead of deferring it as 
we now do for the classical student until he 
reaches the college. For, at present, classical 
education in the secondary school, like the 
formal education that used to precede it in the 
elementary school, is, for most pupils, only an 
alleged preparation for education, not education 
itself. 



CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 95 

When we articulate our pre-high-school courses 
in history, science, mathematics, manual training, 
and the rest, with the corresponding high school 
course, in some such way as has just been sug- 
gested for foreign language courses, we shall 
then make the pupil's school career a real and 
not a deferred education at every stage of his 
progress ; and the historical disparity between 
the kmd of studies pursued below the high 
school and those pursued in the high school 
will disappear. There will be no artificial sepa- 
ration of the high school from the rest of the 
school system. We shall have adjusted our edu- 
cational endeavor to the real process of the 
pupil's unfolding development, and shall make 
our schools minister equally to all classes of 
pupils, whether they have the good fortune to 
be born of wealthy and socially superior parents, 
or whether, merely equipped with ability and 
earnestness, they are obliged to make the most 
of the brief educational career their circum- 
stances will permit. 



IV 



A SIX-YEAR HIGH SCHOOL PRO- 
GRAMME 



IV 



A SIX-YEAR HIGH SCHOOL PRO- 
GRAMME 

Our experiments during the last two decades 
or so have taught us, I think, that, in general, 
about six years should be assigned to the ele- 
mentary school course, the time needed for the 
acquisition of the school arts, the tools of learn- 
ing. We have learned further, that, during those 
same years the beginnings of general culture 
should have been undertaken ; and that, after 
six years, the emphasis should be on the acquisi- 
tion of general culture, while the emphasis on 
the school arts should diminish, until after the 
eighth year there is no emphasis on the school 
arts at all. Incidentally the school arts will be 
involved, of course, in further acquisition. 

It seems to me, therefore, not difficult to 

point out the meaning we attach to " elementary 

education " and " secondary education " to-day. 

Elementary education means the acquisition of 

rL.ifC. 99 



lOO A SIX-YEAR HIGH SCHOOL PROGRAMME 

the school arts, together with some beginnings of 
general culture, during the first six years of the 
pupil's school career. Secondary education follows. 
It means that although the school arts still de- 
mand some attention, the emphasis, thenceforth, 
shall be on the acquisition of general culture. 

The tables at the end of this chapter will serve 
to give somewhat further definiteness to the ideas 
which have just been expressed. These tables 
were prepared by Mr. George D. Pettee, Prin- 
cipal of the University School, Cleveland. He 
was chairman of a committee to report on an 
extended high school curriculum ; and this com- 
mittee made a report at the conference of col- 
legiate and secondary instructors at Western 
Reserve University, on November 29, 1902. 
" The investigations of the committee," he says, 
" are condensed and exhibited in tabular form, 
as best expressing the professional judgment and 
the recommendations of nearly two hundred 
teachers, principals, and school superintendents, 
who have made detailed replies to the inquiries 
of the committee." This report, therefore, repre- 
sents a contemporary tendency. No single in- 
dividual and no single school would probably be 



A SIX-YEAR HIGH SCHOOL PROGRAMME lOI 

content with this summary as a programme of 
studies. That is not the intention. The intention 
is to represent the consensus of opinion so far as 
that consensus can be expressed in tabular form. 

When we examine the tables, we observe that 
the ages indicated for secondary education are 
from twelve or thirteen up to seventeen or 
eighteen. That is, according to the opinion of 
these two hundred secondary school teachers, 
principals, and superintendents, the time limit of 
secondary education is fixed at six years, and the 
age of the pupils during that time is fixed at from 
twelve to eighteen years. 

Now precisely this period from twelve to 
eighteen years of age is the period of secondary 
education as defined by many private schools and 
endowed schools. They recognized long ago that 
four years, on the basis of our contemporary ele- 
mentary education, is too short a time to do the 
work that should be done in secondary education. 
Consequently for a long time they have given 
more than four years to secondary education. We 
are now pleading for an extension of the time of 
secondary education for the public school pupil, 
too ; so that he, as well as the private school pupil, 



102 A SIX-YEAR HIGH SCHOOL PROGRAMME 

may profit by all the resources that schools with 
good teaching and good equipment can offer 
him. 

I do not intend to dwell on the details of 
Mr. Pettee's tables. My object is rather to call 
attention to them as an expression of a con- 
temporary tendency approved by teachers, prin- 
cipals, and superintendents. The tables plainly 
show a desire to secure, if possible, a six-year 
high school programme. 

The difficulty of assimilating the two upper 
grades of the elementary school with the high 
school has often been pointed out by teachers 
and school officers. I have always felt, how- 
ever, that as soon as we have fixed our minds 
on an object which we regard as decidedly 
worth attaining, we shall find the means of 
attaining it. I therefore feel strongly that the 
first thing to do in order to promote this 
reform (for I regard it as such, — the universal 
six-year secondary course), — -the first thing that 
we need to do is to fix the six-year second- 
ary school as a desirable conception in the 
minds of superintendents, principals, and teachers. 
Having done that, a demand for teachers who 



A SIX-YEAR HIGH SCHOOL PROGRAMME 103 

can meet the new requirements will be set up ; 
and that demand will be met by the colleges. 

Hence, I do not think that it is necessary, 
although it may be desirable, in order to 
have a six-year secondary programme, to have 
the first two secondary grades in the high 
school building. I see no reason why the 
necessary instruction could not be given in the 
several grammar schools, or, at least, in some 
of them ; and I see no reason why pupils could 
not be transferred to the buildings where that 
instruction is going on. 

I cannot refrain in passing from alluding to 
a kind of education which the secondary schools 
should supply, in part, and the grammar schools, 
in part. If our six-year secondary school is to offer 
equal opportunities to all, as it should, its privileges 
should be so administered that during the last 
two years of the grammar school (first two years 
of secondary instruction), those pupils who can- 
not go farther may secure various kinds of tech- 
nical training ; and, also, during the last two 
years of the secondary school, those pupils who 
cannot go to college may secure similar, but 
more advanced, technical training. 



104 A SIX-YEAR HIGH SCHOOL PROGRAMME 

Let me put the thing in another way. It 
does not seem to me desirable that all the 
pupils in the last two years of our grammar 
schools to-day should study foreign languages. 
Nor does it seem to me advisable that all of 
our pupils in the secondary schools should spend 
their time entirely on what are called the aca- 
demic subjects. It seems to me desirable to 
provide for many of them appropriate voca- 
tional (industrial or commercial) training. We 
might have two years of secondary academic 
training in some grammar schools, and two years 
of appropriate technical training in some others ; 
and appropriate technical training at the upper 
end of all secondary or high schools. 

There are always many objections to a change 
in contemporary practice, but I believe that 
no change is impracticable which is deemed 
advisable. 



A SIX-YEAR HIGH SCHOOL PROGRAMME 



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and Applied 
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I06 A SIX-YEAR HIGH SCHOOL PROGRAMME 



Notes 

No attempt is made in this report to give a prospectus 
adapted to a particular school, locality, or type of pupil. 
Radical changes within the several groups are wholly consistent 
with the proposed outhne as a whole. Adaptations to the 
needs of girls' high schools may be made in several groups of 
studies. The condensation in the present primary and gram- 
mar grades is approved by many teachers who have considered 
the possibility and the need of this reduction. The various 
topics of arithmetic which relate to technical business trans- 
actions or which are best studied after the elements of algebra 
and geometry are mastered, should be postponed to the proper 
grades of the high school course. The following notes aim 
to give brief interpretation to the outhne schedule : — 

1. It is assumed that a twelve-year-old pupil has neglected 
the technical forms of EngHsh grammar, but has mastered a 
limited vocabulary of words in reading, writing, and spelling. 
His primary training should insure intelligent reading and an 
abiUty to write, in accurate Enghsb, simple stories or themes. 

2. A fluency in simple conversation, reading, and writing, 
and to be followed at about fourteen by a grammatical study 
of the modern language, or of Latin. 

3. Such elementary processes in algebraic equations as 
simplify or replace arithmetic processes. 

4. Concrete geometry, constructive and mensurational, with 
little attention to formal logic or demonstration. The essential 
computative and structural facts of geometry (plane or solid) 
may be covered. 

5. Mental arithmetic and reviews. 

6. A carefully selected course, adapted to the several grades, 



A SIX-YEAR HIGH SCHOOL PROGRAMME lO/ 

and involving the writing and personal correcting of frequent 
themes. 

7. Digests of books, by topics and character analyses, 
should be made, and the six-year course should cover a wide 
range of reading. Classical students should not neglect the 
study of English and American history nor fail to know, at 
least in substantial outhne, the beginnings of the history of the 
world, and the essential facts of mediaeval and modern European 
history. Pupils not pursuing the study of Latin or Greek should 
in their own tongue make a critical study of Greek and Roman 
civilization. 

8. PoHtical, historical, and commercial geography, as a 
complementary study in the history course. 

9. A course giving skill sufficient to illustrate the materials 
and processes used in the laboratory or at the bench. 

10. Definite physical training supplementing the games, 
recess recreation, and athletic sports. 

11. Singing and vocal caHsthenics. 

12. The refined forms of the art of expression. Practice 
in public speech and preparation of formal essays and debates. 

13. If taught within the school programme, it may properly 
displace some other form of manual training. 

14. In this or in the preceding year should begin the 
regular college preparatory Latin. Students unlikely to enter 
college may profitably continue Latin through a year's trans- 
lation of simple Latin prose. 

15. Largely commercial arithmetic, meeting the business 
needs of boys who leave school at this age. 

16. A student entering college or technical school without 
Latin should have practically a mastery of one modern language 
and at least a limited familiarity with a second. 



I08 A SIX-YEAR HIGH SCHOOL PROGRAMME 

17. Candidates for classical courses in college will need to 
substitute a modern language for this higher mathematics. 

In general, the course for the last two or three years will 
conform in some degree to the requirements of the college or 
technical school. 

So long as Greek, or an equivalent language study, is re- 
quired for admission to particular colleges, high schools and 
academies will probably sacrifice some part of the history or 
science groups, with so-called classical pupils. 



THE SIX-YEAR HIGH SCHOOL COURSE 

AS A PART OF THE COMPLETE CURRICULUM AND WITH A TRIENNIUM 
AS THE UNIT OF DISTRIBUTION 



Educational 


Schools 


Ages 






Characteristics 
















T 


Reading, writing, 
spelling, arithmetic, 




LOWER 


6 to 9 


2 




(Primary School) 




3 


drawing, music. 

The same, with lan- 
guage forms, geogra- 


PRIMARY 








phy, and elementary 




UPPER 




4 


science. Object les- 




(Grammar 


9 to 12 


5 


sons, with familiar 




School) 




6 


animals and plants, 
metals, coal, rain, 
snow, ice, brooks, etc. 
Making of collections. 



A SIX-YEAR HIGH SCHOOL PROGRAMME 



109 



THE SIX-YEAR HIGH SCHOOL COURSE ^Continued) 



Educational 
Orders 


Schools 


Ages 


t 



Characteristics 










General studies, aim- 










ing at the true appre- 




LOWER 




7 


ciation of nature, men, 




(High School 


12 to 15 


8 


and books. Major 




OR Academy) 




9 


half of curriculum de- 
voted to facts rather 


SECONDARY 








than to forms. 
Similar studies, in 




UPPER 




10 


more technical form. 




(High School 


15 to 18 


II 


Processes more ex- 




OR Academy) 




12 


haustive. College 
preparatory courses. 










Greek begun only in 










college, and forming 




COLLEGE 






the basis of the clas- 




OR 


18 to 21 




sical collegiate course. 




TECHNICAL 






The college and tech- 


UNIVERSITY 


SCHOOL 






nical course largely 


(Tertiary) 


PROFESSIONAL 






free from professional 
studies. 

The age of admission, 




OR 

GRADUATE 


21 to 24 




for average students, 
two years lovi^er than 




SCHOOL 






at present. 



The work of the home and of the kindergarten may be disregarded in 
determining the essentials of a school curriculum; likewise the advanced 
courses, at home and abroad, elected by specialists. No attempt at the 
solution of college problems is attempted. The schedule outline which 
may precede or follow the extended high school course, is here furnished, 
to illustrate the significance of the three-year period. 



V 

THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 



V 

THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 

We commonly regard the school as wholly re- 
sponsible for the education of our children. But 
that the school alone cannot be responsible for 
this education is obvious on a moment's reflec- 
tion. The school has direct control of the chil- 
dren during only five hours of the day, five days 
in the week, for not more than forty weeks of 
each year. This is a total less than one-fifth of 
the waking hours. Hence, during at least four- 
fifths of the waking hours, the children are re- 
sponsible to the home, not to the school. 

Nevertheless, the home's share of responsibil- 
ity is not fairly expressed by this simple mathe- 
matical statement. Many of the educational 
influences to which the children are subject do 
not originate in the individual home any more 
than in the school, nor are they within its con- 
trol. These influences emanate from the natu- 
I 113 



114 THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 

ral surroundings, and from the community life 
as a whole, — its industrial, commercial, and polit- 
ical activities, its amusements, traditions, religion, 
and contemporary moral and intellectual stand- 
ards. 

It thus appears that our children and youth 
are subject to an important education — the 
indirect, but none the less powerful, fortuitous 
education of natural environment and social 
experience — which neither the home nor the 
school is able directly to control. But both are 
concerned in subordinating this education to 
their own direct teachings; both seek to re- 
enforce it when favorable to the ultimate ends 
they have in view, and to counteract it when 
unfavorable. Both home and school seek to give 
the coming generation such a command over 
themselves, and their material and social environ- 
ment as will enable them to react on it to their 
own permanent advantage, and the advantage of 
the social group to which they belong, or to 
which they aspire. 

Now, while the family has other important du- 
ties to perform, education is the whole duty of the 
school. This is the sole ground of its existence. 



THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 115 

Hence, whatever the duties of the home may be 
regarding education, the school must always 
bear the largest share of responsibility for the 
result. Still, the home's share of responsibility 
remains considerable ; first, because of the inevi- 
table disparity between the hours spent in and 
out of school ; second because the impressions of 
the school are easily effaced or weakened unless 
reenforced and supplemented by home sanctions, 
or stimulus, or sympathy; third, because the 
school, like other human institutions, is too often 
imperfect, and not infrequently fails in its aims, 
equipment, or methods, to minister adequately to 
the high ends for which it is established; and, 
finally, because the financial support of the 
school, on which its whole efficiency ultimately 
depends, must come from the homes taken col- 
lectively, — that is, from the community. 

One would suppose that, under such circum- 
stances, cooperation would be the established re- 
lation between the home and the school. One 
would suppose that parents and teachers, recog- 
nizing their mutual responsibilities to the same 
children, would find or make opportunities for 
personal contact with each other; that the par- 



Il6 THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 

ents would seek to learn as much as could be 
learned by outsiders of the teachers and the 
school work, and the teachers would endeavor 
similarly to know the parents and the home 
conditions of the pupils. But the fact is that 
such a foundation for effective cooperation is 
rare. Most parents know little or nothing about 
the school lives of their children, and the teach- 
ers are equally ignorant about the children's 
home lives. 

Sometimes the teachers and sometimes the 
parents are responsible for this state of affairs. 
Most private schools and some public schools dis- 
courage the visits of parents to the class rooms. 
Hence parents are often deterred, through the 
fear of intrusion, from making the acquaintance 
of the teachers or informing themselves by per- 
sonal inspection about what the schools are or 
are not doing for their children. On the other 
hand, parents are often careless or indifferent, 
and repeated and urgent invitations to visit the 
school are disregarded. Sometimes the parents 
— and these are the less enlightened or the 
more optimistic parents — consciously charge 
the teachers with full responsibility for the chil- 



THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 117 

dren's welfare, during the school hours, and, 
having done so, feel that they have done their 
whole duty, both to the children and to the 
school, and rest content until something goes 
wrong. 

It may be said in passing that the reluctance 
of some schools to invite the visits of parents is 
not without justification. The conception of edu- 
cation and of school work entertained by most 
parents — just because they are not teachers — 
is likely to be purely conventional, as regards 
the course of study ; crude and out of date 
as regards books, equipment, and methods of 
teaching; and, — just because they are parents, 
— either too lenient or too severe as regards 
methods of government and discipline. Under 
such circumstances helpful cooperation between 
the home and the school cannot be expected 
from the visits of parents, unless the teachers are 
willing to undertake the appropriate and tactful 
education of the parents, — a process for which 
there is, ordinarily, no provision, and from which, 
in the absence of recognized provision, most 
teachers naturally shrink. Besides, some par- 
ents are simply meddlesome. To invite all 



Il8 THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 

parents to visit the schools is to invite the med- 
dlers among the rest. 

Now, it is generally agreed by thoughtful lay- 
men and teachers that the want of cooperation 
between the home and the school is an unfortu- 
nate neglect of educational opportunity. The re- 
sult of this neglect is not seldom a perversion of 
the very education which both the home and the 
school really wish to provide, and certainly the 
best results cannot be expected unless the home 
and school reenforce each other, and unless, 
in case of need, the home insists on a better 
school, or the school does its best to improve 
the home. 

Cooperation between the home and the school 
is needed, in the first place, to guard the health 
and promote the normal physical development 
of the children. Few parents are consciously 
indifferent to the physical welfare of their chil- 
dren, but many in all classes of society do not 
appreciate the serious consequences of neglect in 
this matter. As long as the children are not 
perceptibly ill, to the ordinary observer, it is as- 
sumed that they are doing well This assump- 
tion may be quite erroneous. 



THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 119 

Dr. Francis Warner, basing his conclusions on 
the examination of fifty thousand school children 
in England, states that 6.8 per cent of the girls, 
and 8.S per cent of the boys showed develop- 
mental defects. When these developmental de- 
fects were taken in connection with other defects, 
for example, abnormal nerve signs or low nutrition, 
the percentage of children possessing the com- 
bined defects was 38.4 (boys), 36.2 (girls) and 
16.2 (boys), 26.3 (girls), respectively.^ Now, devel- 
opmental defects are commonly the result of a 
disregard of the laws of health in the lives of the 
pupils themselves, or in their physical surround- 
ings, or both. 

The home life of the children of the poor is 
often a life of drudgery. Once out of school, the 
girls are occupied with various kinds of domestic 
duties, and the boys, when not needed to help at 
home, are engaged in various kinds of work for 

1 " The Study of Children," by Francis Warner (Macmillan & 
Co.), p. 250. See also a suggestive paper, "Habits of Work and 
Methods of Study of High School Pupils in Some Cities in Indiana," 
by N. C. Johnson, in the School Review (Chicago) for May, 1899; 
and Edward Shaw's (The Macmillan Company) " School Hygiene." 
Dr. Shaw's book is an excellent guide for both parents and teachers. 
The treatment is clear, brief, and sufficiently non-technical to be 
appreciated by every intelligent reader. 



I20 THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 

small wages. The tension of such a life may not 
be excessive at any moment, — although often 
likely to be so, — but it is constant. Add to this 
that the food is probably poorly prepared and not 
infrequently deficient in quantity or, at least, in 
nutritive quality, and the time for sleep as much 
too short as the hours of work are too long. All 
this may take place in a crowded section of the 
city, or other locality, where rent is cheap, and 
the sanitary conditions are unsatisfactory. What 
wonder that the children from such homes come 
to school pale, thin, nervous, and irritable ; unable 
or unwilling to subject themselves to the neces- 
sary restraints and constraints and the applica- 
tions to duty required in the school ? The entire 
school day means for the pupil a new set of 
exactions. 

Under such circumstances, it is clear that the 
home life and school life together make demands 
on the pupil that easily become excessive. The re- 
sult is that the normal weariness, that disappears 
completely under the influence of recreation, and 
rest, becomes chronic fatigue, entailing its whole 
series of usual consequences, — developmental de- 
fects, together with impaired health, — and so ulti- 



THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 121 

mately a dismal condition of body and mind that 
makes all work a burden, and recreation a bore. 
It is true that such results may, occasionally, be 
inseparable from poverty; but in general they 
are traceable, not to poverty, but to ignorance. 

But it is not only in the homes of the poor that 
improper, hygienic conditions constitute a menace 
to the physical development of the children, and 
interfere with their general education in school. 
The children of the middle and the upper classes 
are not called upon to do housework or to work 
for wages out of school, but they are permitted, 
or even encouraged to indulge in time consuming 
and physically exhausting social diversions. It 
matters little in the end whether a child or youth 
undermines his physical strength by excessive 
w^ork, or excessive play, or by a combination of 
the two. In each case he misses the physical 
development that he ought to get, and he there- 
fore unfits himself for the highest efidciency in 
the duties and for the fullest participation in the 
refined pleasures of life ; and this preparation for 
efficient and complete participation in all the 
worthy interests of life, it is the fundamental 
purpose of education to secure for him as fully 



122 THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 

as possible. Complete living demands vigorous 
bodily health, together with the power of endur- 
ance ; it ought not, therefore, to be difficult to 
cause most parents of the ambitious classes to 
see the importance of hygienic conditions for 
their children, — - the only conditions under which 
vigorous physical health and efficiency can be 
secured. 

Now the price of health, as of liberty, is eter- 
nal vigilance. We have medical inspection of 
schools, but who will claim that it is more than 
a merely perfunctory performance ? It does, on 
occasion, serve to check the spread of contagious 
diseases, and this is, of course, a very important 
service to the children and the community ; but 
so far as I know, we have nowhere in the United 
States a thorough-going medical inspection of 
schools, with appropriate authority to correct 
abuses wherever found. 

Again, it is never assumed that the random, 
haphazard education of experience and environ- 
ment is sufficient in the field of intellectual and 
moral education. It is well known that such an 
education leaves many gaps; that it fails to 
arouse and develop many of the child's powers, 



THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 123 

because it never reaches them ; or, if it does, it 
does so only now and then without discriminating 
selection and appropriate emphasis. Moreover, 
the strenuousness of persistent application is 
wanting, and there can be no real training — no 
permanent benefit — without such strenuousness. 
Most of the physical training in our schools 
hardly deserves the name. Not much can be 
expected of ten minutes once or twice a day, often 
under unsuitable conditions, given by untrained 
teachers, and lacking adequate expert supervision. 
How much progress could be expected in Latin 
or algebra under such circumstances and with 
such a time allotment,^ Dr. Warner, quoted 
above, lays stress on the benefits to be derived 
from good physical training. He says : — 

" Evidence is available from comparison of 
reports on children seen in schools, where good 
physical training was provided, in contrast with 
a large school, where no such training was 
given. In the school without physical training 
the proportion of both boys and girls with 
abnormal nerve signs was higher, and a larger 
proportion of the boys were reported by the 
teachers as dull pupils. This cannot be attrib- 



124 THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 

uted to the developmental cases or to low 
nutrition, as their proportion was lower than in 
the other schools ; it must, I think, be ascribed 
to the absence of physical training. ... It 
may be inferred that physical training tends to 
improve the brain condition of children, pre- 
venting or removing disorderliness in motor 
and in mental action, and promotes healthy 
activity in both directions ; this applies not 
only to children perfectly well made in body, 
but also to those in some slight degree below 
normal." 

But developmental defects, abnormal nerve 
signs, and the rest, are traceable to unhygienic 
school buildings as well as to a disregard of 
personal hygiene. Improper heating, lighting, 
and ventilation, cramped and unhealthy posi- 
tions during school hours, owing to unsuitable 
or ill-fitting school furniture, — these also con- 
tribute their important share to undermining 
the health and normal physical development 
of the children. 

How far we are from having hygienic school 
buildings is painfully evident to any one who 
will read the reports of our city school super- 



THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 125 

intendents, or who will take the trouble to look 
about him in his own community.^ It is no 
exaggeration to say that unsanitary school build- 
ings, with respect to light, heat, and ventilation, 
abound. Suitable physical training, seriously pur- 
sued under wise direction, in our schools is still, 
as I have said, almost universally conspicuous 
by its absence, and medical inspection of schools 

1 By way of illustration, I quote from the report (for the year 
1898) of the superintendent of schools of an important city in 
New York. 

"Nearly all of our rooms do not furnish sufficient floor space 
or cubic contents for the number of children occupying them. In 
many, if not most, cases this condition is caused by our being 
obliged to crowd into these rooms more children than they were 
planned for. 

" In amount of light, study rooms in all our older buildings are 
seriously defective. ... In several large study rooms the direc- 
tion from which the light comes is wrong. 

" In the matter of ventilation, we are in a very bad condition. 
In only six buildings have we any ventilation worthy of the name, 
while of these six only one gives anywhere near sufficient pure air 
for the number of pupils now occupying them. . . . The trouble 
comes mainly from overcrowding in all of the older buildings ; in 
the first twelve or thirteen built there is practically no ventilation 
except by doors and windows. 

"Almost two-thirds of all the desks and seats in use are un- 
healthful and unsuitable for school use. Only those p.urchased dur- 
ing the last three years have reasonable approach to perfection." 

See also an article, "The Big Red Schoolhouse," by Elizabeth 
M. Howe, in the Educational Review for October, 1899. 



126 THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 

is still nearly everywhere a perfunctory perform- 
ance. Under such circumstances, we must not 
be surprised if the health and physical develop- 
ment of our children suffer. Under such circum- 
stances, it is difficult to escape the conclusion 
that an examination of our school children would 
bring to light an alarming amount of school- 
bred ill health and developmental defects. 
That is to say, under such circumstances, the 
school, which should stand for the development 
of our children into health and strength, may 
actually promote their development into physi- 
cal weaklings, — and this is indeed a perversion 
of education. 

But if the indifference or ignorance of par- 
ents, unsanitary school buildings, and the 
absence of proper physical training are re- 
sponsible for these things, the remedy is not 
far to seek. In all cases, for rich and poor, for 
the ignorant and the well informed, the duty of 
the school is plain. It is the institution set 
apart by society for the education of the chil- 
dren into physical as well as mental and moral 
health and vigor. It may, therefore, nay, it 
ought to insist that whatever the home condi- 



THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 127 

tions may be, it shall be allowed, yes, required, 
to set the example of providing for children 
and youth the most salutary physical environ- 
ment possible, and of devising and enforcing 
the wisest rules of personal hygiene. 

Now it is clear that such a recognition of 
the function of the school can only be secured 
by the cooperation of the parents, — for intelli- 
gent oversight of the pupils' health from day 
to day requires the services of trained experts, 
and these, together, with hygienic school build- 
ings and furniture, and good physical training, 
cost money. But, if the parents were once con- 
vinced of the harm done their children by fail- 
ing to provide suitable buildings, and furniture, 
and the best physical training they can secure, 
these essentials to the children's welfare would 
be forthcoming. 

That the school may present such matters 
as I am now discussing, and many others 
affecting the efficiency of the schools, to the 
parents, either for their instruction or to stimu- 
late their investigation, the school and the 
home need recognized opportunities for con- 
ference. In some schools a rather elaborate 



128 THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 

plan has been worked out, during the past 
few years, whereby parents and teachers neces- 
sarily cooperate in caring for the interests 
of their common charges. By means of ques- 
tion blanks sent to the parents, much informa- 
tion concerning each child is secured by the 
teachers, and this information is made the basis 
of conferences between parents and teachers. 
This plan has also usually included blanks for 
recording information about pupils by teachers, 
for transmission to other teachers or schools, as 
the pupil advances from one grade to another, 
or from one school to another. 

The entire plan has been called " Pupil 
Study." It seems to be useful and bids fair to 
win favor gradually wherever it is undertaken. 
There is no doubt, I think, that when wisely 
administered such a plan may provide an excel- 
lent basis for effective cooperation between 
teachers, and between teachers and parents, in 
promoting not only the pupils' physical wel- 
fare, but a wise treatment of the pupil in every 
detail of his school career.^ 

1 For details concerning " Pupil Study," see " Child Study in 
Secondary Schools," by F. W. Atkinson, the School Review, V, 461 ; 



THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 129 

Opportunities for conferences between par- 
ents and teachers are provided, also, in many 
places, by parents' meetings called periodically 
by the teachers — usually by the superintendent 
or by some principal ; and by the " Education 
Societies," now established in many places 
throughout the country. The education soci- 
eties may be made, I believe, the most useful 
means of communication between the teachers 
and the parents that can be devised. They 
represent the organized educational interests of 
the community. The initiative in founding 
them is usually taken by the teachers, but the 
members are chiefly laymen. By means of 
regular meetings, devoted to the exposition 
of contemporary educational questions, they 
serve to inform their members of the scope 
and meaning of such questions, and so to cul- 
tivate public opinion in favor of important 
measures of progress and reform. Such socie- 

"A Study of High School Pupils," by Myron T. Scudder, the 
School Review, VII, 197; "How can the Public High School reach 
Individuals?" by F. W. Atkinson, the School Review^ VIII, 377. 
"The Teacher's Practical Application of the Results of Child 
Study," by F. E. Spaulding, Jou7'nal of Pedagogy (Syracuse, N.Y.), 
XVI, 34. 

K 



130 THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 

ties will in time, I doubt not, do much to 
overthrow the prevalent apathy toward un- 
sanitary school buildings and inadequate and 
unsatisfactory physical training in our schools.^ 

Cooperation between the home and the school 
is no less essential in promoting the intellectual 
and moral development of the pupil. This 
commonplace is so obvious that its importance is 
likely to be overlooked. But it is just because 
such cooperation is too often lacking that some 
of the most serious perversions of educational 
opportunity take place. 

The school is rare that does not set up and con- 
sistently endeavor to maintain a high standard of 
intellectual achievement and of conduct. There 
may be a few private schools that are, primarily, 
commercial enterprises, and only incidentally 
educational institutions ; but most private schools 
are not of this sort ; and however much some of 
them may be justly condemned as mere cram- 
ming machines for examination purposes, very 
few can be justly charged with mere pretence, 

^ See " Beginnings of an Education Society," by Dr. Walter 
Channing, Educational Review, XIV, 354 ; also the Report of the 
United States Commissioners of Education for 1898-1899, I, 538. 



THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 131 

while consciously adhering to low standards of 
achievement. In the public schools mercenary 
motives can have no weight. Occasionally a 
public school pretends to standards which are 
not enforced, but nearly all public schools refuse 
to tolerate indifference, indolence, or caprice, in 
work, and set themselves squarely against con- 
cessions to any divergence whatever from recog- 
nized standards of conduct. 

Now it is equally true that most homes cherish 
high standards of achievement and conduct for 
their children, so far as they are capable of con- 
ceiving them, whatever their social grade may 
be ; and, in general, the standards are at least as 
high as those of the school. Nevertheless, it is 
not seldom that the school fails to attain a satis- 
factory approximation to its ideals, just because 
parents and teachers do not work together in 
attaining desired results. I think it is fair to say 
that these failures are more often chargeable to 
the home than parents are willing to admit ; and 
this is particularly true of parents belonging to 
the middle and upper classes. While theoreti- 
cally approving the standards set by the school, 
these standards are, in practice, not infrequently 



132 THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 

regarded as too severe or exacting by the parents 
for their children ; or, at least, the importance 
attached to serious and continuous endeavor to 
realize these standards in the daily school life of 
the pupils is practically regarded as excessive by 
the parents. Under such circumstances, the 
pupils, being human, abate their devotion to 
school duties, and the importance of athletics, 
social functions, and other diversions, is corre- 
spondingly augmented in their eyes. I have 
even known an ambitious but socially inclined 
young student, in all seriousness, to deplore the 
fact that he had so much "to do" that he had 
no time to study. 

Now, of course, the coarser adjustments of the 
home and the school, in the matter of quantity 
and quality of work demanded of the pupils, 
are provided for in the ofificial relations be- 
tween them, and this is also true with respect 
to the conduct expected and enforced by the 
school. When A is idle or troublesome and 
there is danger that he will fail of promo- 
tion, or that he will be suspended for miscon- 
duct, the teacher or principal fills the proper 
official blanks, furnished for the purpose by 



THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 133 

the superintendent, and sends them to the par- 
ents. Usually the pupil's descent to Avernus 
is checked by this procedure, and cooperation 
is, temporarily at least, forcibly secured. 

But sometimes the administration of this pro- 
vision for official cooperation between the home 
and school is rendered unnecessarily difficult; 
indeed, the efforts of the school are sometimes 
thwarted by a singular and culpable dishonesty 
of which some parents are guilty. This dis- 
honesty is the result of weakness. The par- 
ents charge the school, in the pupil's presence, 
perhaps, with full responsibility for enforcing 
its standards, and, in case of need, its penalties, 
on the pupil ; and promise themselves, the pupil, 
and the school, that unless the school require- 
ments are met, the pupil shall surely come to 
grief. But when the pupil's delinquencies have 
to be dealt with, some parents weakly and un- 
wisely allow themselves to become the pupil's 
advocates for clemency, in spite of the extended 
series of reminders which they have received 
tlmt the pupil has been going astray. No use- 
ful, active cooperation can be expected from 
such a parent, but the school has the right to 



134 THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 

expect at least passive cooperation. It has the 
right to expect that the parent will stand aside, 
and permit the school to attempt the reforma- 
tion of the pupil, — unaided, but also unham- 
pered by misguided or dishonest efforts to save 
the pupil from the consequences of his own 
misdeeds. 

But the greatest need of cooperation is in 
the finer adjustments of the school and home 
influences to each other in the case of the ordi- 
nary, well-disposed pupils, who constitute the 
great majority of the school. The activities of 
the school may be greatly reenforced or weak- 
ened by the notice taken of them at home. Of 
course it is quite possible for parents to repel 
rather than to invite the pupils' conversation 
about their school interests. If the children 
are daily subjected to a running fire of ques- 
tions about their studies or their teachers in 
a mere matter-of-fact way; if the parents fail 
to respond sympathetically to a youthful enthusi- 
asm — temporary it may be, but none the less 
important to him who feels it — in a book, or a 
study, or a teacher; if the children have reason 
to feel that every petty delinquency, or trifling 



THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 135 

difficulty, will be looked upon with marked dis- 
favor or met with moralizing comment; or if 
the parents have no sense of humor and fail 
to appreciate the children's point of view in 
some mischievous, but childish and really harm- 
less, prank, and treat such youthful faults with 
solemnity or severity instead of good-natured 
raillery or friendly advice — under such circum- 
stances we may be sure that children will say 
little at home about what goes on in school. 
But most children respond readily to the intelli- 
gent interest of their parents in school affairs 
and are glad to talk about them to sympathetic 
and appreciative listeners. Instances of such a 
good mutual understanding between pupils and 
parents are, fortunately, not rare, but they are 
less common than they ought to be. 

There is, usually, little difficulty about home 
sympathy in the matter of interscholastic ath- 
letic contests, and this interest, though some- 
times productive of excesses on the part of the 
pupil, is, on the whole, rather helpful than 
otherwise. It is, of course, a stimulus to par- 
ticipation. Even that widespread vicarious par- 
ticipation known as "supporting the team," 



136 THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 

although not adding much to the physical de- 
velopment of the pupils and seeming rather 
trivial to us elders, is unquestionably a means 
of rousing and developing youthful loyalty to a 
common interest, — the welfare of their common 
institution, — and so has, on the whole, a bene- 
ficial moral effect. The parents share the en- 
thusiasm of their youngsters before and during 
the games, and afterwards also partake of the 
bliss of triumph or the torments of defeat. The 
teachers, the parents, and the pupils make com- 
mon cause for the time being. After a defeat 
the determination to win next time is reen- 
forced by all alike ; every period of practice is 
discussed and its bearings on the next contest 
scrutinized. After a triumph mutual congratu- 
lations equally stimulate the determination to 
hold the preeminence just won. In this way 
wisely conducted interscholastic athletics may 
do much to help the school and the home 
to set up and maintain a high standard of 
physical development and vigor. 

But it is not only in the field of athletic sports 
that good results are thus secured. There is, for- 
tunately, at this moment, a growing interest in 



THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 137 

interscholastic (especially intercollegiate) debates. 
What has been said of the reenforcement of the 
school by the sympathy of the parents in respect 
to athletics cannot be asserted with equal truth 
about debating. Nevertheless, the interest of the 
non-participating pupils and of the parents in an 
interscholastic debate often falls but little short 
of the interest in an approaching athletic contest, 
with corresponding beneficial results. 

But my object in calling attention to these 
interscholastic contests is not to emphasize their 
value as such. My special purpose is to point 
out how great is the stimulus of a common end 
conceived and striven for by all alike, — parents, 
teachers, pupils; and hence, to indicate, to some 
extent at least, what we might expect if we could 
secure a similar cooperation in the less dramatic, 
ordinary activities of the school, day by day. 
Each pupil is daily making conquests or suffer- 
ing defeat in his individual work. The extent 
to which the significance of these daily successes 
and defeats could be increased through home 
sympathy varies, of course, with the varying con- 
ditions of the home, but there is no doubt that 
in many of our best homes many valuable oppor- 



138 THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 

tunities for encouraging the pupils with timely 
aid, for augmenting the pupils' interest in their 
work, and for stimulating them to achieve some- 
thing more than routine results, are lost because 
parents do not know and often do not seem to 
care what the pupils' work or other school 
interests may be. 

A powerful educational influence in every 
school which the parents may do much to help 
or hinder is its to7te. No influence of the 
school is more powerful. It springs from the 
community life of the pupils, and of the pupils 
and teachers. It is, for the most part, developed 
unconsciously, so far as the pupils are concerned, 
but a high tone cannot be developed without 
the wise cooperation of good teachers — men 
and women who are themselves representative 
of a high tone. What is this tone, and how 
may it be maintained? The answer is not 
difficult. 

The tone of a school consists of the standards 
of work, thought, and conduct which it maintains, 
and the extent to which these standards domi- 
nate the varied activities of the school. Where 
high standards of work in quantity and quality 



THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 139 

exist — that is, where strenuous application to 
duty and insistence on the best achievement com- 
mensurate with health, ability, and maturity are 
upheld, and where high ideals of thought and 
conduct are striven for and approximately real- 
ized in the daily intercourse of the teachers and 
pupils, — there the tone of the school is high, 
and its influence is elevating and refining. " We 
live by admiration, hope, and love," and it hap- 
pens that these qualities are easily aroused and 
can be wisely controlled and directed in children 
and youth of school age. Under precisely the 
same course of study the pupils of two different 
schools may " live " in very different lives. A 
mechanical routine which consists in assigning 
and " hearing " lessons is deadening to this life 
of " admiration, hope, and love " ; an inspiring 
interest in the subject-matter of instruction, felt 
by the teacher and sympathetically imparted 
to the pupils by him is most conducive to that 
life. An austere or sour demeanor, an unsym- 
pathetic censorship over the pupil's interests and 
conduct by the teacher, or a moral pedantry 
that looks with suspicion on every niove that the 
pupil makes, and treats with equal severity the 



I40 THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 

breaking of an arbitrary though perhaps desirable 
rule of the school and a moral offence, a marti- 
net system of government and discipline, — these 
are characteristics of the teachers that detract 
from the tone of the school and lower the plane 
of that living which we would maintain. It is an 
old story that character, scholarship, interest in 
the teacher are essential to the development of 
these characteristics in the pupil ; that only life 
begets life. 

In marked contrast to what I am pleading for, 
let me cite two brief illustrations of " how^ not to 
do it." Not long ago I heard of a teacher who 
said to her class in history, which had not been 
doing very well for some days, " All the monu- 
ments of ignorance may rise." As no one rose, 
she continued, " Miss A, why don't you rise ? " 
Miss A replied, " Because I am not a monument 
of ignorance." This reply should have brought 
the teacher to her senses, but instead she sent 
the pupil to the principal for impertinence. 

Another teacher, who had taught Cicero for 
twenty years, said to me after a. somewhat trying 
effort with a class of boys, struggling with the 
" Manilian Law," " If there is one thing in this 



THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 141 

world I have no patience with, it is stupidity." 
I could not help telling him that I had seen no 
evidence of stupidity in his class ; and, if I had, 
there was nothing that seemed to me more 
entitled to patience than stupidity, inasmuch as 
the victim of stupidity is not to blame for his 
meagre intellectual endowment. Comment on 
the effect of such teachers on the tone of the 
school is unnecessary. 

Thus far I have been dealing with general 
considerations. I wish to devote the remainder 
of this chapter to a brief discussion of a sin- 
gle problem of great importance in our con- 
temporary education, and requiring for its wise 
solution the most effective cooperation we can 
secure of the home and the school. 

The problem I refer to is how to secure the 
wisest possible administration of the elective 
system in secondary education. The elective 
system is now happily becoming general in our 
secondary schools, but it suggests the most im- 
perative necessity for cooperation between the 
home and the school. The elective system 
wisely administered in secondary education is 
a great boon ; unwisely or loosely administered, 



142 



THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 



it may become pernicious. If the elective sys- 
tem is allowed to entail diminished strenuousness 
in work, it becomes a perversion of educational 
opportunity; but if wisely administered, a youth 
may find it, during the period of secondary and 
college education, his greatest opportunity to 
make the most of himself for his own good and 
for the good of society; for his own good, be- 
cause voluntary effort usually accompanies the 
privilege of choice ; and in case of need the duty 
of strenuous and persistent endeavor can be justly 
insisted on ; and for the good of society, because 
strenuous endeavor in harmony with dominant 
capacities and tastes leads to the habit of ade- 
quate achievement — that is, the fullest and most 
varied usefulness of which men are capable in 
vocational and extravocational activities. More- 
over, it leads simultaneously to the habit of inde- 
pendent initiative, to joy in work, and to real 
satisfaction in the refined pleasures of life. 

These results are worth striving for. But they 
cannot be procured by a careless or a loose 
administration of the elective system during that 
most important period of later childhood and 
youth, — the period of adolescence. This is the 



THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 143 

period when the serious purposes and activities 
of life begin to have an interest which previously 
they did not and could not possess. The fleet- 
ing and random interests of early and middle 
childhood are passing away. Aims and habits 
rapidly acquire permanence. Under wise guid- 
ance, they may, therefore, be permanently influ- 
enced. If now we seize the fleeting moment and 
make sure the youth gets from it what he needs 
for guidance, for solace, and for inspiration, — that 
is, if we adapt the opportunities of his education 
to him as an individual, — we may expect to find 
him in his maturity shaping his career, enjoying 
his leisure, and behaving toward his fellow-men 
in accordance with the ideals of work, of pleas- 
ure, and of conduct that allured him in his 
youth. 

I said, a moment ago, that such a result 
could not be secured by a careless or loose ad- 
ministration of the elective system. I mean that 
it cannot be secured if we do not guard the youth 
against the blindness of his own ignorance, and 
if we do not insist upon the persistent and 
strenuous pursuit of work once undertaken. We 
must protect the youth against his own ignorance 



144 THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 

by suitable restrictions on his choice at first ; we 
must cultivate self-direction by gradually with- 
drawing restrictions as he grows older; and we 
cannot expect habits of adequate achievement, 
unless we insist on a sufficiently long and a 
sufficiently continuous pursuit of work once 
undertaken. 

Now it is just here that the cooperation of 
the home and the school is so essential. Both 
the kind of work needed by the pupil, and his 
rigorous pursuit of it for a period sufficiently 
long to determine his capacity or want of ca- 
pacity in a given subject of study, can only be 
secured by a good mutual understanding be- 
tween the teachers and the parents. Of course 
I am supposing that both parents and teachers 
are seeking without conscious bias the best good 
of the pupil ; and that they are not unduly in- 
fluenced in the restrictions or the advice they 
impose on the pupil by personal predilections 
or by too keen a sense of the conventionally 
correct thing. That they, especially the parents, 
will be influenced more or less by the prevail- 
ing fashion in education goes without saying; 
and, of course, in education, as in other forms 



THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 145 

of human activity, one must give sufficient heed 
to fashion not to be conspicuous for the lack 
of conformity to it, or for ultra devotion to it. 
But it is not too much to expect that, on the 
whole, each parent and every teacher will seri- 
ously study the young life entrusted to him, 
and so deal with it educationally as to bring it 
to the fullest perfection which native endow- 
ment makes possible, and to make it count as 
much as possible in the sum total of social 
service. As I have already said, this can be 
done consistently and economically by a wise 
use of the elective system, and this requires the 
completest possible cooperation of the home 
and school. What the pupil chooses to do 
both the home and the school must insist that 
he shall perform. To do otherwise would be 
to use the elective system as a means of escap- 
ing education, and not as the most valuable 
means of real education, that we have thus far 
developed. 

It must be evident, also, that much of the 
work of the school, however well and clearly 
conceived, will fail of reaching fruition, both 
during the pupil's school life and thereafter, 



146 THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 

unless the school can count on the effective 
cooperation of the homes, taken collectively, of 
the community. If the school lays stress on a 
life of service, and consistently aims to fix this 
idea as a life ideal in the pupil's mind, while 
most of the influential members of the com- 
munity persist in acting as if they regarded 
work in every form as a hardship which they 
intend to save their children from; if the 
school uses the lessons of history and of con- 
temporary social interests to inculcate worthy 
ideals of private citizenship and of public office 
as a public trust, while the community shows 
its indifference to these ideals by toleration of, 
or practical devotion to, their opposites ; if the 
school rouses an interest in culture for its own 
sake, and beckons the pupil onward to a career 
of spiritual growth, whatever his vocation may 
be, while the community is apathetic toward 
the pursuit of science, literature, and art for 
their own sake, and niggardly in promoting 
such pursuit ; -— in short, if the school aims to 
prepare its pupils for a life of usefulness, of 
worthy citizenship, and of refinement, and the 
pupils are conscious that this threefold prepara- 



THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 147 

tion is not valued in the life outside and after 
the school as it is in the school, how can we 
expect that the lessons of the school, however 
well planned, will be a lasting influence in the 
pupils' lives ? It is clear, then, that the com- 
munity cannot safely evade its share of the 
responsibility for the right training of our chil- 
dren and youth. That responsibility is summed 
up in one word, reenforcement. The education 
which the community is constantly giving our 
children and youth, — the instruction which the 
community's life entails, and the habits which 
this instruction constantly tends to promote, 
will either strengthen or weaken the influence 
of the school. I ask the parents, which shall 
it be? 

I place much stress on the necessity of co- 
operation by the home and the school. But let 
us not deceive either ourselves, as teachers, or 
the non-professional public. Professional prob- 
lems must be worked out, if at all, by pro- 
fessional workers — by the teachers, not by 
laymen. Laymen — the community — may and 
should tell us, as nearly as they can, what they 
desire to have the schools accomplish, but they 



148 THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 

can give us very little assistance in carrying out 
those wishes in the class room. Beyond pro- 
viding suitable buildings and equipment, for the 
nature and scope of which they must depend 
on the teachers, their most effective coopera- 
tion is to make sure, from time to time, that 
they are employing the right persons to carry 
on the work they want done. In plain terms 
lay interference in professional matters is not 
helpful cooperation, but obstruction. 

One of the most conspicuous examples of lay 
interference in professional affairs is the present 
organization of our city school boards, — an or- 
ganization which permits, and usually requires, 
them to exercise executive as well as legislative 
functions. Sub-committees (of school boards), 
on courses of study, or on the appointment of 
teachers, or on the selection of text-books, are 
as competent to attend to the important pro- 
fessional duties with which they are charged as 
sub-committees of a hospital board consisting 
of laymen — supposing such sub-committees to 
exist — would be competent to decide about 
the nourishment and care of the patients, and 
the efficacy of the remedies or exercises pre- 



THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 149 

scribed for them, and on the quaKfications of 
the nurses employed. Nobody supposes, nowa- 
days, that any hospital board is competent to 
discharge such functions. They employ an 
expert, or experts, whom they can intrust with 
these professional duties. But, in the analogous 
case of the school-board committees, it is still 
supposed that professional duties can be wisely 
performed by non-professional persons. 
To sum up : — 

1. The school cannot be wholly responsible for 
the education of our children. The individual 
home and the community are jointly responsible 
with the school for the education of every child. 

2. Nevertheless, the school must carry the 
largest share of this responsibility, because it is 
the institution which society charges with the 
sole function of education, while the home and 
other institutions of society have many other 
functions. It is, therefore, the business of the 
school to cast the more or less vague desires of 
the community respecting education into definite 
aims, and to find, to organize, and to administer 
the means, through which these aims are to be 
achieved. 



150 THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 

3. But, in order that the school may really ful- 
fil the function for which it is established, it must 
have the active cooperation of the individual 
home and of the community, for : — 

[a) Unless the work of the school is reen- 
forced by home support, the efforts of the 
teachers will not meet with an appropriate re- 
sponse from the pupils ; the teacher may work 
as hard as he pleases, he cannot rely on corres- 
ponding effort on the part of the pupil if the 
pupil's parents are indifferent or even averse to 
the aims and work of the school. 

{b) Unless the school has the adequate finan- 
cial support of the community, it can do nothing 
well ; it cannot provide suitable buildings and 
equipment ; it cannot secure and retain teachers 
who possess scholarship, cultivation, and teaching 
power commensurate with the work they have 
to do ; it cannot provide the skilled supervision 
needed to maintain the school buildings and 
their equipment in a satisfactory condition, and 
the teaching force at a high level of efficiency. 

4. Now, the individual home and the com- 
munity will not give moral or financial support 
to the school — will not cooperate with the 



THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 151 

school unless they believe in it; unless they 
believe that the school is doing what they wish 
it to do, and doing it satisfactorily. Hence the 
necessity for conferences between the homes and 
the school, in order that the school may know 
clearly and understand the desires of the home 
in other than merely formal ways, and that the 
home may similarly understand and appreciate 
the difficulties and the efficacy of the school, as 
well as its shortcomings ; and in order that each 
may recognize its own share of responsibility for 
the results actually achieved. 

Three devices for promoting a good mutual 
understanding between the home and the school 
have been referred to, namely : " Pupil Study," 
Parents' Meetings, and Education Societies. 
All these devices are, as yet, more or less imper- 
fect, but they are decidedly promising. Through 
these or similar devices the individual home and 
the community will gradually learn that every 
educational demand puts corresponding educa- 
tional problems to the school ; that these prob- 
lems can be solved successfully and wisely only 
by professional teachers working in the school, 
and not by laymen ; and that patience and a 



152 THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 

willingness to experiment intelligently are in- 
dispensable in the wise solution of educational 
problems ; and the school will learn that adjust- 
ment to the gradually changing and ever expand- 
ing educational needs of individuals and of 
society is the fundamental condition on which the 
effective cooperation of the community depends. 



VI 

OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 



VI 

OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

The conservation and improvement of any insti- 
tution of society will always depend on the repeti- 
tion of searching inquiry into its significance for 
contemporary usefulness. Such inquiry into the 
efficiency and satisfactoriness of government in 
all its forms, means, and instruments ; of the 
church, the school, the family; of the scope, 
means, and methods of industry and commerce ; 
of the nature and influence of public amusements 
and recreation ; and indeed of every phase of 
community life, must be perpetually renewed : 
first, to acquaint each generation with the scope 
and quality of its resources ; and second, to pro- 
mote the appreciation and further development of 
what is good, the abolition, modification, and im- 
provement of what is obsolete or unsatisfactory, 
and to insure appropriate provision for new needs 
as they appear. 

155 



156 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

On the teachers is laid the responsibility of 
planning wisely and carrying on efficiently the 
educational institutions of society. It is, there- 
fore, their special task — ever renewed — to ex- 
amine carefully into the scope and aims, the 
limitations, and the means and methods of con- 
temporary education, in order, first, that they may 
themselves possess a just estimate of its contem- 
porary efficiency and defects, and set them forth 
clearly and convincingly to the community ; and 
second, that they may work confidently and stead- 
ily for its improvement, aided by enlightened 
and sympathetic public opinion. This chapter 
is accordingly a contribution to such an examina- 
tion of contemporary educational aims and prac- 
tices. I limit myself in the present instance to 
certain phases of pre-collegiate education only. 
In this examination I shall avail myself of con- 
temporary lay and professional criticism indis- 
criminately, and add such comments as may seem 
appropriate. 

Our faith in education as a social force and as 
a function of society, as well as a means of devel- 
oping and elevating the individual, is an inheri- 
tance from the founders of the Republic. Scarcely 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 157 

were the Puritans settled on the shores of Massa- 
chusetts Bay when this faith was manifested by 
their deeds. Boston was only five years old 
when, in 1635, the people besought " Brother 
Philemon Pormort " to become their schoolmaster. 
In the following year they set up a college, since 
known as Harvard College, and a few years later, 
when the young Commonwealth was but twelve 
years old, they passed the first American statute 
concerning education. This statute, the law 
of 1642, declared that every child among them 
should be " trained in learning and labor and 
other employments profitable to the Common- 
wealth," and made it the duty of the " selectmen " 
to see that this decree was carried out.^ 

By 1647 the people had already profited much 
by their investment in education ; and, as we 
have seen, being fearful lest the absorbing pursuits 
of pioneer life might render some of the towns 
indifferent to their own permanent welfare and to 
the permanent welfare of the Commonwealth, the 
people voted that every town as soon as it com- 
prised fifty householders should provide an 
elementary school either at public expense or 

^ Law of 1642. Records of Mass., Vol. II, p. 8. 



158 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

otherwise; and also that as soon as it had as 
many as one hundred families, or householders, it 
should set up a (Latin) " grammar school " in 
which children might be fitted for the university ; 
and further that any town that neglected to com- 
ply with this vote should be punished. 

The vote just referred to — the celebrated law 
of 1647 — and the earlier law of 1642 established 
the principles on which the public-school system 
of Massachusetts, and so ultimately of the United 
States, is based. Those principles are : — 

1. The universal education of youth is essential 
to the well-being of the State. 

2. The obligation to furnish this education 
rests primarily on the parent, but the State has a 
right to enforce this obligation. 

3. The State may determine the kind of edu- 
cation and fix the minimum amount of education 
to be insisted upon for every member of the 
Commonwealth. 

4. Taxes may be assessed and collected to pro- 
vide such education as the State demands, and 
these taxes may be general though the school 
attendance is not. 

5. Secondary as well as elementary education 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 159 

may be provided at the public expense. Oppor- 
tunity must be afforded at public expense to pre- 
pare for the university.^ 

From 1647 t^ ^^'^^ present day these principles 
have gained increasing force, and well-nigh uni- 
versal acceptance; and throughout the northern 
and eastern portion of the country at least, gen- 
eral embodiment in practice.^ 

Under the influence of this faith and our grow- 
ing social needs we have developed the original 
elementary reading and writing schools and the 
grammar schools of colonial times into our free 
public schools and substantially free state uni- 
versities as we know them to-day. At the same 

1 See " Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School System," 
by George H. Martin. Appleton, 1901. 

^ An examination of the statistics published by the United States 
Commissioner of Education will show that our faith in education 
has grown with our growth, and was never stronger than it is to- 
day. During the years from 1 870-1 900 schools of all grades, 
both public and private (or endowed), increased in number enor- 
mously ; and the expenditures for schools now annually reach sums 
that seem almost incredible. In the public schools, not only is 
the total expenditure per pupil increasing ($15.55 i^ 1869-1870; 
$20.21 in 1 899-1 900) ; but what is more significant, the increase per 
capita of the population is increasing also ($1.64 in 1869-1870; 
$2.84 in 1899-1900)5 and this in spite of the enormous influx of a 
population that pays no taxes. See report of United States Com- 
missioner of Education, 1901-1902, Vol. I, pp. xii ff. 



l6o OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

time we have encouraged the fullest and freest 
development of private and endowed schools, col- 
leges, and universities, in order that every educa- 
tional demand, as such, might be satisfied, and 
every improvement in the adjustment of educa- 
tional means to educational needs, by whomso- 
ever conceived, might find adequate and speedy 
recognition. 

Moreover the public schools have often learned 
and may still learn important lessons from private 
and endowed schools, i.e. from private enter- 
prise and from educational philanthropy. Indeed 
every one knows that some of our most cherished 
educational institutions have sprung from private 
initiative and private philanthropy and not from 
the directors of public education and the public 
purse. The simple schools of the fathers an- 
swering to their simpler needs have accordingly 
grown into a vast aggregate of private and public 
educational institutions that aim in their variety 
and comprehensiveness to meet the diversified 
and rapidly growing needs of our advancing 
civilization.^ 

1 In 1901-1902, according to the report of the United States 
Commissioner of Education, there were enrolled in the public and 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION i6l 

The faith of the American people in education 
is great, but they do not look with satisfaction on 
an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars 
in school property, nor do they cheerfully spend 
more than two hundred millions in a single year 
for the maintenance of schools, nor listen with 
approval to the unquestionable assertion that 
the expenditure for schools, vast as it is, is far 
from being adequate to meet pressing educa- 
tional needs, unless they are satisfied that all 
this outlay, present and prospective, is or will be 
followed by satisfactory educational results; i£. 
by a steady growth in high thinking and right 
living, and a steady increase in the economic 
and political efficiency of the oncoming gen- 
eration. 

The American people want good schools, just 

private schools and colleges of the United States (exclusive of the 
kindergartens), 17,460,000 pupils. Of this number 16,479,177 were 
in elementary (i.e. pre-high-school) grades ; 734,760 were in sec- 
ondary (high school) grades ; and 246,063 were in colleges and uni- 
versities. Of this number the public schools, exclusive of the state 
universities, enrolled 15,925,887. These pupils were taught by 439,- 
596 teachers. During the same year these teachers received, in 
salaries, $150,013,734, and the value of school property reached the 
colossal sum of $601,571,307. The total school expenditure for the 
year was $235,208,465. 

M 



l62 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

as they want every other public or semi-public 
utility, to correspond to their needs; and they 
have been for some time, and are at this moment, 
engaged as they never were before in scruti- 
nizing their vast provision of public education. 
The public press, the daily papers, and, what is 
more important, the current magazines show the 
closeness and universality of this scrutiny. Sev- 
eral important magazines contain, in nearly every 
issue, thoughtful papers on education, and one 
of them maintains a department for educational 
research. 

Nor are the people content with scrutiny 
alone. Several of the most important educa- 
tional undertakings of modern times have been 
originated and carried forward by the represen- 
tatives of the lay public, and not by the repre- 
sentatives of the teaching profession. Let me 
cite a few such instances of what has been most 
appropriately called " voluntary statesmanship " 
in education. 

Some years ago the city of Cleveland, Ohio, 
was, like many other cities, suffering from a 
very bad organization of its school system, an 
organization that made it well-nigh impossible 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 163 

for the superintendent of schools and his teach- 
ing corps to make the schools really serve the 
people and not self-seeking politicians and other 
self-seekers. " The school board was composed 
of twenty members elected by districts. It was 
insisted that this system worked badly, that 
members were bullied by constituents to pro- 
cure special favors for individuals or the districts 
they represented, and that they naturally reflected 
this spirit and disposition in the board. It was 
said that buildings were unwisely located, cer- 
tain contractors favored, and, worse than all 
else, that teachers who were unfit were con- 
tinually appointed in the schools. The school 
government was administered by innumerable 
committees, and nobody could be found who 
was responsible for anything."^ 

PubHc-spirited citizens scrutinized this plan, 
condemned it, and ultimately (in 1892) by legis- 
lation secured a complete transformation of the 
organization and administration of the city's 
school system. "... The school bill was pre- 
pared by four men, three of them lawyers, of 
whom one was then upon the bench, and the 

^ Educational Review, VI, 9. 



l64 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

fourth was president of one of the city banks. 
In previous years the bank president had had 
considerable experience, and had rendered valu- 
able service in the school board, and one of the 
others also had been a member of the board. 
While all were men of affairs, they were not 
connected with the school system, they claimed 
no expert or professional knowledge of the 
schools, and they made their bill without the 
assistance of school superintendents or the aid 
of the volumes of proceedings of the National 
Educational Association." ^ 

In citing this instance of voluntary states- 
manship in education on the part of the lay 
public, I do not mean to maintain that the 
school system they achieved was an ideal re- 
sult, nor even the best that could have been 
attained under the circumstances. I do not 
think it was. But it was incomparably better 
than the system it displaced, and the principles 
of organization and administration on which it 
was founded seem to me sound beyond any pos- 
sibility of doubt. Those principles are chiefly 
two, namely, the centralization of responsibility 

1 Educational Review, VI, 9. 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 165 

and authority, both for the educational and the 
business side of the school system, and the re- 
striction of the activities of the Board of Edu- 
cation to legislative functions. 

But, however great the services which the 
voluntary statesmen of Cleveland achieved for 
their own city, they accomplished still more for 
the country at large. In other cities of the 
country public-spirited citizens, moved by the 
needs of their own cities and the example of 
Cleveland, took steps to reorganize their school 
systems in accordance with the principles that 
had determined the revised Cleveland system. 
Toledo, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Rochester, Balti- 
more, New Haven, New York, and other cities 
have already succeeded in transforming their 
school systems with great advances in efficiency; 
and Detroit, Chicago, and Boston have been 
roused to make similar attempts which, although 
as yet unsuccessful, are sure to succeed in the 
end. 

Still more recent than these instances of lay 
initiative in promoting important educational 
undertakings is the extraordinary and superla- 
tively useful work of the two cooperating boards 



1 66 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

now well known as the Southern Education 
Board and the General Education Board. The 
scope and aims of the work of these important 
educational agencies constitute the most con- 
spicuous evidence known to me of the great faith 
in education that inspires our best Americans, 
and of the extraordinary power of organizing 
means and methods that such men can com- 
mand for the accomplishment of the beneficent 
results at which they aim. 

The magnitude and importance of the move- 
ment for the upbuilding of education in the 
South which these Boards promote, its patriotic 
and disinterested character, the unusually high 
quality of the men who take part in it, the good 
sense displayed by them in handling the many 
delicate problems involved in a propaganda of 
educational enlightenment and reform, and the 
magnificent success which has already been 
achieved — all this makes this movement one of 
the most significant undertakings of our time. 

The instances just given of a large statesman- 
ship in educational affairs are illustrations of 
the independent initiative so characteristic of 
men in a free democratic society. They are 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 167 

instances in which municipal and state govern- 
ments have been moved to action by intelligent 
and determined private citizens. Other illus- 
trations are not lacking. 

Some years ago, it was perceived by far- 
sighted men and women, especially the latter, 
that we were allowing two or three valuable 
years for a child's education to go to waste. 
Until a child was old enough to be put to his 
book he was allowed to run wild, or, at least, to 
miss the appropriate growth mentally, morally, 
and physically to which he is entitled, for want 
of a systematic development of his natural im- 
pulses and spontaneous activities. It was per- 
ceived that parents rarely gave their children 
the kind of attention during these early years 
which they needed, either from ignorance, or 
absorption in their own pursuits, or both ; and 
hence that a great educational opportunity was 
being neglected. In the kindergarten these men 
and women found the instrument they were 
seeking for the education of both the children 
and the parents ; and, then as now, throughout 
the land, they gave this new instrument of edu- 
cation moral and financial support, until its 



l68 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

great intrinsic and incidental value for both 
little children and their parents was recognized 
by school officers and governing boards. The 
friends of the kindergarten still have much terri- 
tory to conquer. But with 48 ii kindergartens 
(in 1900) in the United States, 18 15 of them 
public, comprising 3326 teachers and 131,657 
pupils, it is clear that educational faith here, as 
elsewhere, is followed by results. 

The story of the rapid spread of vacation 
schools and the newly awakened interest in 
supervised play and playgrounds for children 
is another instance of educational effort initiated 
and for a tim.e maintained solely by benevolent 
and clear-sighted members of the community, 
who perceived that a great educational need 
was not recognized by our cities and towns. 
In New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, 
and other cities the public-school system has 
been gradually awakening to its responsibility 
in this respect, and the good results are already 
apparent in greatly diminished juvenile delin- 
quencies in all cities or localities of cities where 
these new agencies for good have been estab- 
lished. While the decrease in the number of 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 169 

arrests of juvenile offenders is a striking con- 
firmation of the good thus accompHshed,^ it is 
beyond question that even more good is accom- 
pHshed for the great mass of well-behaved chil- 
dren who receive instruction in manual training, 
sewing, cooking, gardening, nature study, govern- 
ment, and other useful subjects in the vacation 
schools ; and, above all, have a chance for normal 
development through play — for play, as we now 
know, is nature's means of guarding the normal 
life of the young, and of carrying forward their 
development 

These illustrations serve to show that Ameri- 
can faith in education can, under wise direction, 
remove mountains in the path of educational 
progress. I have already said that the responsi- 
bility of carrying on efficiently the education so 
universally desired, and of constantly adapting 
it to contemporary needs, is laid on the teach- 
ing profession. To that end persistent vigilance, 
courage, and energy are essential : ceaseless vigi- 
lance to discover defects, courage to acknowl- 

1 See, for example, the interesting article on vacation schools by 
Charles Mulford Robinson in the Educational Review^ XVII, pp. 
250 flf. 



170 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

edge and face them, persistent energy to remove 
them, and to recognize new needs as they arise. 
This thought gives me courage to proceed with 
what I have to say; for I believe that all pro- 
gressive teachers welcome criticism, and are not 
disconcerted by it — but only stimulated to self- 
criticism and increased efficiency. 

I begin with the kindergarten. There are 
two kinds of criticism of the kindergarten. One 
kind emanates chiefly from the less reflective 
members of the lay public, although it is some- 
times traceable to teachers, and is likely to be ap- 
proved by unthinking persons, whether teachers 
or laymen. This kind of criticism is apt to be 
harsh, peremptory, and sweeping, and sometimes 
satirical. It runs like this : The kindergarten 
is permeated by a foolish sentimentality that 
makes mental and moral weaklings ; it develops 
dependence instead of self-reliance ; it under- 
mines the capacity for effort instead of stimu- 
lating the self-activity of the children ; its means 
and methods are antiquated and appropriate only, 
or at least chiefly, in the rural parts of Germany, 
where they originated ; the kindergarten is a 
presumptuous and exaggerated attempt to force 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 171 

on the infant mind concepts and activities quite 
unsuited to little children, and hence harmful ; 
that children three to five years old ought not 
to be in " school " anyway, but at play, in charge 
of their mothers and nurses ; and, finally, that 
children are kept in the kindergarten too long. 
Such sweeping adverse criticism of the kinder- 
garten is, of course, unjust; it commonly springs 
from narrow observation and imperfect compre- 
hension; and, on occasion, from the search of 
a clever writer for " material " with which to 
adorn a tale, such as " The Kindergarten Child 
after the Kindergarten" and " The Madness of 
Philip." On the other hand, we may not dis- 
miss these views of the kindergarten as always 
wantonly unjust, nor regard the welcome ac- 
corded the literary embodiment of them as 
merely the reward of literary cleverness ; for 
I regret to say that I have myself occasionally 
seen a kindergarten that approaches uncomfort- 
ably near the ones portrayed in Miss Carter's 
and Miss Daskam's literary skits. Moreover, 
nothing would be gained by dismissing ad- 
verse criticism, whether just or unjust, with- 
out consideration. Nothing is ever gained by 



1/2 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

ignoring opposition or objections to a good 
cause, since such action merely allows obstruc- 
tions to accumulate unchecked. Something is 
usually gained by interchange of opposing views. 
In this particular instance there is much to 
gain : for, in the first place, very few will claim 
that the kindergarten in its present develop- 
ment is a perfected instrument of education ; 
and, in the second place, it is a fact that the 
adoption of the kindergarten, as an integral part 
of the public-school system, is proceeding but 
slowly, — very slowly as compared with the rapid 
development of the public high school, for ex- 
ample. According to the report of the United 
States Commissioner of Education, the number of 
public and private kindergartens in the country 
was 3100 in 1892 ; and in 1900 the number of 
public kindergartens was only 181 5, or but little 
more than half the number of public and private 
kindergartens in 1892. On the other hand, the 
corresponding figures for public and private 
high schools in 1892 and public high schools 
alone in 1900 are 4185 and 6005, respectively; 
ix, there are nearly one and one-half times as 
many public high schools in 1900 as there were 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 173 

public and private high schools in 1892, and 
this in spite of the fact that there are many 
times as many children who could attend the 
kindergarten as there are children who could 
attend the high school; and also in spite of 
the fact that a high school costs very much 
more than a kindergarten, and serves, as has 
just been said, a much smaller portion of the 
community. 

We can scarcely attribute the slowness of the 
introduction of the kindergarten to the want 
of enthusiasm and insistence on the part of 
its friends; for no body of workers in the edu- 
cational field can compare in enthusiasm and 
energetic advocacy with the kindergartners and 
their friends. The cause must be sought else- 
where. Devotion and enthusiasm to a cause 
are not enough to win widespread public con- 
viction of its worth, nor equally widespread 
allegiance to it. Indeed, mere devotion and 
enthusiasm do not constitute enlightenment, 
although sometimes made to do temporary ser- 
vice for it. My point is, therefore, that whatever 
the justice or injustice of the adverse criticism of 
the kindergarten, it has far too serious an effect 



174 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

to be passed over without consideration, whether 
voiced by an individual who can scarcely define 
the cause of his dissatisfaction, or by a clever 
writer who does it for him. 

And this brings me to the second kind of criti- 
cism referred to above. It is based on more or 
less insight into the aims and scope of the kin- 
dergarten work, and an appreciation of the value 
it may possess in education. It emanates from 
the more thoughtful lay public, from professional 
students of education, and from the kindergart- 
ners themselves. Its tone is not destructive, but 
judicial. Its most helpful form is that of inter- 
ested and serious inquiry. 

This kind of criticism springs, first of all, I 
think, from interested observation of the young 
child. It notes the free and spontaneous activi- 
ties of children, by which they live and move 
and have their being. It notes that the child's 
games and playthings, his cooperations and his 
collisions with his playmates and elders are not 
regulated nor limited by any scheme or system. 
And out of it all comes, under favorable condi- 
tions, health, vigor, happiness, alertness, intelli- 
gence, successful achievement. It notes the 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 175 

entrance of such a child to the kindergarten. 
From free play and spontaneous activities he 
passes to " gifts," " occupations," " kindergarten 
songs and games." It seems to some as if the 
limitations this change imposes on the scope 
and quality of the child's activities were arti- 
ficial obstructions, and not natural helps to set 
free his powers and give him life more abun- 
dantly. 

This kind of criticism accordingly asks: Do 
we neglect too much to follow the child's lead, 
once he is in the kindergarten, and so, on occa- 
sion, both underestimate and overestimate his 
capacities and needs? Is the kindergarten 
bound by adherence to preconceived notions of 
the adult mind concerning the best means of 
normal development, instead of guided by the 
child's real needs as revealed by himself ? Does 
it make too little use of the child's contemporary, 
natural, and social environment, and too much 
of " stories," " gifts," and " occupations " as a 
means of enriching the child's experience, and 
hence as a means of promoting self-expression 
and so of his normal development? Is there 
too much "dear" and too little kindly but firm 



1/6 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

admonition, and, on occasion, compulsion, in the 
process of socializing the little human animal ? 
Is there an attempt to convey knowledge that 
a kindergarten child cannot assimilate, and an 
appeal to powers that he cannot yet possess ? 
Does the kindergarten, therefore, in doctrinaire 
fashion lead the child to distrust his own expe- 
rience — an obstructive and a dangerous and 
possibly a permanent barrier to his growth into 
enlightened self-dependence ? Does it, on the 
other hand, in the fear of demanding too much, 
of being " too stimulating," limit and define, in 
minutest detail, the range of the child's thought 
and conduct, so that he rarely feels the challenge 
of opportunity, and the satisfaction over small, 
but to him real, difficulties ? Is there still too 
much of the minutise and of the symbolism of 
the German kindergarten left in spite of recent 
eliminations ? To what extent is the kinder- 
garten a real introduction to the life of a good 
American school, an important means of ena- 
bling the child gradually, surely, naturally, to 
achieve growth in knowledge and power? All 
these questions and others like them may be 
summarized as follows : " How far do the pres- 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 177 

ent method and teacher relate themselves to 
what has preceded the kindergarten in the life 
of the child ? " and " How far can [they espe- 
cially] the prescribed gifts and occupations re- 
late to what is to follow in the life of the 
child ?"i 

In formulating anew these questions as an 
embodiment of contemporary, thoughtful, and 
sympathetic criticism of the kindergarten, and 
stating them for consideration, I am assuming, 
of course, as I have a right to assume, that 
kindergarten leaders, like other disinterested 
workers in the field of education, want to get 
at the truth, and want to see it triumphantly 
vindicated in practice. I assume also that they 
are prepared to believe with me that devotion 
and enthusiasm must be reenforced by a con- 
vincing statement of the theory or doctrine on 
which they are based, and a conspicuous and col- 
lective exposition of the efficacy of this doctrine 
in practice. We have able advocates of kin- 
dergarten theory, of course; but their advocacy 

^ Alice C. Dewey, in " The Place of the Kindergarten," Element- 
ary School Teacher^ III, 274. See also the last two paragraphs of the 
same paper. 



178 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

lacks convincing force, because they speak in- 
dependently instead of collectively. In my 
opinion, therefore, the real way to win for the 
kindergarten just recognition is, first, to give its 
aims and scope clear and dispassionate defini- 
tion, and secondly, to show the teaching pro- 
fession and the public as clearly and convincingly 
the good it accomplishes. That is to say, we 
need from time to time a convincing exposi- 
tion of contemporary kindergarten theory — an 
exposition that embodies recent gains, confesses 
imperfections, and suggests further investiga- 
tion, and so free from mysticism or other 
vagueness that any intelligent adult can grasp 
it; and, similarly, we need a periodic, equally 
definite vindication of this theory in a collec- 
tive report made by competent persons on how 
this theory works in practice. We need, in short, 
to organize contemporary kindergarten theory and 
kindergarten practice so that their meaning and 
efficacy for human development will be clear to 
all intelligent persons whether they are interested 
in the kindergarten merely as students of edu- 
cation, or as parents and citizens who have chil- 
dren to educate and school taxes to pay. 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 1 79 

To make such an exposition really valuable and 
effective, it is clear that those who attempt it 
must be open-minded seekers after truth, and 
ready to proclaim and apply it. It is also clear 
that, to this end, the teachers, generally, must be 
led to cooperate with the kindergartners ; indeed, 
it is clear in this, as in all other educational 
undertakings, that no isolated workers in a par- 
ticular portion of the field can solve their peculiar 
problems alone. Are there not ten kindergarten 
leaders in theory and practice, and an equal num- 
ber of teachers, principals, and superintendents, 
who, working together, could thus enlighten their 
colleagues and the lay public } And would not 
such enlightenment necessarily undermine indif- 
ference or apathy, remove misconceptions, im- 
prove the work done, and, at the same time, 
establish the kindergarten as solidly in the hearts 
of the people as it deserves ? I need hardly add 
that this could not be brought to pass, if the 
kindergartners themselves lack adequate general 
cultivation and appropriate technical training, as 
has too often been the case in the past. 

But contemporary scrutiny and adverse criti- 
cism are by no means confined to the kinder- 



l8o OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

garten. In a recent number of the AmeiHcan 
Physical Education Review I find an arraignment 
by several physicians of contemporary educational 
practice, which attacks the schools at many 
points. I summarize it as follows : School life is 
artificial and unnatural ; the programmes are con- 
gested and promote cram and haste ; the teach- 
ing lacks thoroughness ; too much home work is 
imposed on the pupils ; children are admitted to 
school too young ; examinations for promotion are 
an evil ; the discipline is too severe and military 
in character ; the school session is too long for 
the younger children ; the number of children to 
each teacher is far too great, and each teacher 
has too much to do ; kindergartens are not pro- 
vided for children under seven ; physical culture 
does not conform to the laws of growth, and 
room and opportunity for free play are neglected ; 
and the final result is overstrain and defective 
intellectual development. 

Now what shall the teachers say to such a 
broadside of criticism .? The first and most 
obvious reply is that some of the faults referred 
to are not of their making. These faults exist 
often against their earnest remonstrance. They 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION i8l 

therefore easily fall into two groups. For the 
first group the public, not the teachers, are 
directly responsible ; for the second group the 
teachers are chiefly responsible. I take these 
groups up in order. 

It is true that children are too often admitted 
to school too young ; that the school session is 
often too long for the younger children ; that 
there are not kindergartens enough ; that physical 
training is nearly everywhere very imperfectly 
provided and inadequately supervised, and that 
room and opportunity for free play are too often 
conspicuous by their absence ; that in nearly 
every school system each one of a large number 
of teachers has too many children to care for; 
and that all these things promote overstrain 
and defective mental development; but for these 
things the teaching profession are not directly 
responsible. The public, not the superintendent 
and teachers, demand the admission of little 
toddlers to the school who ought to be at home 
or in the kindergarten ; the public, not the 
teachers, insist on two daily sessions for each 
child ; the public, not the teachers, fail to provide 
kindergartens; the pubHc, not the teachers, fail 



l82 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

to provide appropriate physical training, play- 
grounds, and gymnasia for every school ; the 
public and not the teachers are responsible for 
the excessive number of pupils per teacher ; the 
public, not the teachers, are responsible for these 
things — sometimes even against the earnest 
remonstrance of the teachers. 

On the other hand, it must be admitted that, 
while the superintendent and the teaching corps 
are not directly responsible for these defects of 
our schools, they sometimes lack courage and 
persistence in reminding each other and the pub- 
lic that these defects exist and can be remedied 
only by increased expenditures. The public want 
good schools, as I have said, but they do not 
know what good schools are, unless they are in- 
formed by those who have the technical knowl- 
edge to plan good schools and describe them 
convincingly; and the public will be slow to 
recognize what good schools ought to cost unless 
by skilful exposition, reiteration, even expostu- 
lation, if necessary, they are compelled to hear 
and understand. Merely to say, therefore, that 
these defects of contemporary educational prac- 
tice are not of our making and exist against our 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 183 

will, is not to do our whole duty in the matter. 
We must seek and find a way to remedy them. 
And the way lies, as I have indicated, through 
a thoroughgoing recognition and exposition of 
them, and a wise but ceaseless insistence on the 
financial support that will make it possible to 
remove them. 

But all the defects above enumerated cannot 
be charged to want of adequate financial sup- 
port. Congested programmes of study; un- 
natural and artificial school life ; unsympathetic 
and purely authoritative, Le, military, discipline ; 
cram and hurry, and the evils of promotion 
examinations ; the imposition of too much home 
work ; lack of thoroughness in teaching, — these 
things, where they exist, must be charged to the 
superintendent and the teaching corps. Now, I 
do not admit that these defects everywhere char- 
acterize our schools, any more than I admit 
the universality of the faulty kindergartens re- 
ferred to above. But I am confident that they 
exist to some extent in every school system, and 
therefore deserve the perennial consideration of 
every school officer and teacher. 

The first question one naturally asks is, Are 



l84 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

the programmes congested, and, hence, do we 
hurry pupils and cram them with superficial 
attainments ? Do we sacrifice essentials and 
devote ourselves to frills and fads ? What are 
essentials, and what are frills and fads ? 

These questions are, on the one hand, ques- 
tions of contemporary educational theory — 
questions affecting the adequacy of the scope 
and aims of contemporary provision for educa- 
tion to meet contemporary needs; and, on the 
other, questions relating to the efficacy and wis- 
dom of contemporary educational practices as 
measured by their results in the intellectual, 
moral, and physical welfare of the children. 

These questions are not new. They were 
attacked nearly ten years ago by the National 
Educational Association. That body appointed 
successively three committees to deal with them. 
The first was the famous Committee of Ten, 
which dealt more particularly with the improve- 
ment of the secondary school programme, but 
also incidentally it rendered important service in 
suggesting improvements in the elementary 
school programme. Then came the scarcely 
less famous Committee of Fifteen, on the cor- 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 185 

relation of studies, which was to attack spe- 
cifically the problem of the relief of congested 
programmes, and attempt its solution through 
"correlation"; and, finally, we had the Com- 
mittee on College Entrance Requirements, which 
was to improve secondary education by estab- 
lishing national norms or units of work in the 
several studies that could be accepted in vary- 
ing amounts and combinations by any higher 
institution, in accordance with its requirements, 
and thus promote a national articulation of 
secondary and higher schools without crowding 
the work in the schools or lowering the stand- 
ards of the best colleges. 

I have elsewhere pointed out how great were 
the services rendered by these committees,^ 
and also how far their reports fall short of ac- 
complishing what they might have accomplished. 
What these committees were appointed to do 
was to furnish guidance to the teaching pro- 
fession and enlightenment to the lay public. 
They did this to some extent, but they also 
added to the contemporary confusion, because 
they did not get together. They worked inde- 

1 Chapter VIII. 



1 86 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

pendently. I have also tried to show that what 
we need, in order to answer pertinent questions 
affecting the aims and work of the schools, is 
definite guidance which we ourselves should 
supply. Without it economic and educational 
waste are inevitable, and helplessness in the 
face of lay or professional criticism real and dis- 
concerting. Without it we are "blown about 
by all the winds of doctrine," headed now for 
this port, now for that; we become confused, 
frequently shift our course; we abandon meas- 
ures before their wisdom has been adequately 
tested, and the result is the contemporary chaos 
of programmes and management. 

The thinkers and workers of the common 
schools, like the kindergarten leaders, — indeed, 
with them, — must therefore try to work to- 
gether. Together they must formulate our edu- 
cational theory with the best insight they can 
command, say once in five years. And then 
they must secure the cooperation of the teach- 
ing force in similarly organizing educational ex- 
perience, i.e. in collecting and reporting on the 
results of theory in practice. A comprehensive 
organization of our contemporary educational 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 187 

doctrine and experience is therefore a desidera- 
tum. May it not be long delayed!^ 

Meanwhile, for the want of it, a reactionary 
tendency has set in in favor of narrow pro- 
grammes like those of the past, so that in some 
parts of the country we are in danger of losing 
the progress of two decades or more. 

For I contend that we have made progress. 
The programmes of to-day, with all their faults, 
are vastly better than the narrow programmes 
of a generation ago. Thirty years ago the 
school was divorced from life. The programme 
of studies was a routine drill in the school 
arts. To-day the school programme does not 
neglect the school arts, — far from it, — but in 
addition provides for a participation in life inter- 
ests. The school aims to be a part of life, that 
part of the pupil's life that renders all the rest 
of his life more significant and valuable ; it aims 
at this result not merely by and by, but now 
for every pupil. I believe therefore that we 
have made progress ; and I beg you to bear 

1 In February, 1902, the Department of Superintendence of the 
National Educational Association appointed a " Committee of 
Eleven" to report on this subject. 



1 88 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

with me while I trace briefly some of the causes 
that underlie the programme-making of the 
recent, and to some extent not so recent, past. 
If, in so doing, I am merely talking common- 
places, I beg you to bear with me none the 
less. The magnitude of these commonplaces 
is my excuse for discussing them afresh. 

First of all, one must remember that a pro- 
gramme of studies is a growth; that it is an 
attempt to meet contemporary educational needs ; 
that at any stage of its development it necessarily 
passes through many approximations to attain 
even temporary efficiency; that the force of 
tradition is great; and that the human instru- 
ments required to bring the programme of 
studies to approximate efficiency and to ad- 
minister it wisely — the teachers — are neces- 
sarily slow to abandon old habits of thought 
and practise and acquire new ones. Further, 
it must not be forgotten that mistakes under 
such circumstances are inevitable ; that all prog- 
ress involves risks ; and that, therefore, much 
patience must be exercised by all concerned with, 
any particular shortcomings in plan or execution 
that appear. 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 189 

Now let US glance at the evolution of our 
elementary programme. A report of the Bos- 
ton Board of Supervisors puts the case admi- 
rably. I quote from it, as follows : — 

" The extension of the primitive curriculum 
has been going on steadily for more than a 
hundred years. Each addition, after being tested 
and having commended itself to public opinion, 
has received the sanction of legislative enact- 
ment and has become a compulsory study. The 
causes and the forces behind all this enlarge- 
ment have been sociological and not peda- 
gogical. 

" To the reading and writing of the colonial 
school, subjects have been added in the fol- 
lowing order: English grammar, spelling, and 
arithmetic in 1789; geography in 1826; history 
of the United States in 1857; music (optional) 
in i860; drawing in 1870; sewing (optional) in 
1876; physiology in 1885; manual training in 
1898. Several of these subjects were at first 
allowed, and later required. Thus physiology 
was allowed in 1850, required in 1885. Drawing 
was allowed in i860, required in 1870. Manual 
training was allowed in 1884, required in 1898. 



190 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

" The introduction of each of these new sub- 
jects has a historical and social setting. Geog- 
raphy was made a compulsory study in 1826. 
Between 1789 and 1826 there had been great 
territorial changes in the United States. Florida 
and Louisiana had been purchased, and the ex- 
pedition of Lewis and Clark had revealed the 
magnitude and importance of this great terri- 
tory reaching to the Rocky Mountains and 
beyond. Settlement had pushed itself far be- 
yond the Alleghanies, and there was scarcely a 
town in Massachusetts which had not sent some 
of its people into the Great Northwest. Eleven 
new States had been added to the Union. Com- 
merce had been developed and ships of the 
country were sailing all seas. The navy had 
distinguished itself in the War of 181 2, and 
Decatur had introduced the United States to 
the piratical powers of Barbary. Out of all this 
had grown wide international relations. It is 
not surprising that in an era of such expansion 
the thoughtful people of Massachusetts began 
to think of geography as an ' essential ' factor 
in the education of their children. 

" The history of the United States was added 



OUR FAITH L\ EDUCATION 191 

in 1857. During the preceding thirty years 
great social changes had taken place. The estab- 
lishment of the new manufacturing industries 
had attracted to the State a large foreign popu- 
lation, and the unsuccessful revolutions through- 
out Europe in 1848 had swelled the number 
to 200,000 in 1850. These people were igno- 
rant of the history and traditions of their new 
home, and they needed and desired to be enlight- 
ened. At the same time the country was in 
the throes of the antislavery struggle, and great 
constitutional questions were at issue. The 
appeal on both sides was to the opinions and' 
acts of the fathers — to history. The public 
discovered that a knowledge of the history of 
the country had become an ' essential ' of popu- 
lar education, and they declared their opinion 
by a statute. 

"Drawing was added in 1870. This followed 
close upon the great Paris Exposition of 1867, 
where the superiority of continental nations to 
England and America in all the artistic fea- 
tures of manufactured products was startling 
and humiliating. It is most significant that 
the original petition to the Legislature in 1869 



192 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

for compulsory instruction in industrial draw- 
ing was signed exclusively by business men, 
leaders in the great industries of the Common- 
wealth. They declared that for the United 
States to maintain its standing as a manufac- 
turing nation drawing was an ' essential ' in ele- 
mentary education. For similar reason manual 
training was introduced. 

" Of the authorized subjects several have been 
forced into the front rank of ' essentials ' by 
modern social conditions. This is true of sew- 
ing, cooking, physical training, and elementary 
science. The latter, under the modern title 
* nature study,' has peculiar claims. 

" Reading has always been deemed of funda- 
mental importance, and in early times children 
passed easily through the narrow gateway of 
the alphabet into the broad fields of literature. 
The passage was easy because the children and 
the writers of literature had had the same expe- 
riences; both had lived in the country and had 
been familiar with nature in all its phases. The 
writers had reflected all these phases in their 
books. They were observers and lovers of na- 
ture, and they wrote for such. Much of the 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 193 

vocabulary they used, and all their imagery, 
expressed ideas and scenes of nature. When 
country life was universal, the children had only 
to learn the word ' symbol,' and they had the 
master-key to open all doors. The transition 
from the primitive country life to the modern 
city life threw a barrier across the way, and 
for thousands of children easy progress became 
impossible. They could learn the symbols as 
before, and could read words, but the words 
conveyed no meaning. The language was es- 
sentially a foreign language. Now in city 
schools the road to intelligent reading is through 
nature study. The same line of work is essen- 
tial as a preparation for the study of geography. 
Indeed, it might all be included under the name 
' geography,' in any formal statement of a course 
of study. 

" The same change in social conditions is 
responsible for the introduction of physical 
exercises into the schools. The limited oppor- 
tunities which the city affords for free play and 
the small demands of modern home life upon 
the bodily activities of children have seemed to 
call for some counteracting efforts, and tenta- 



194 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

tive beginnings have been made in various forms 
of school exercises. 

" This sketch, necessarily brief, shows that 
the present elementary school course is not 
a miscellaneous collection of subjects brought 
together by the chance efforts of enthusiasts, 
but a conscious and intelligent effort of the 
people to frame a course of elementary instruc- 
tion and training adapted to the changed con- 
ditions of social life." ^ 

It thus appears that none of the studies now 
in the programme can be safely omitted ; and 
hence I seem to approve the congested pro- 
grammes from which I admit many schools 
are suffering. But I do not believe that con- 
gested programmes are a necessary consequence 
of adequately comprehensive programmes. Put- 
ting the case briefly, and therefore somewhat 
dogmatically, our contemporary programmes are 
congested because they comprise too large a 
remnant of the old rubbish that used to be 
needed to take up all the time and attention of 
the pupil for eight pre-high-school years. It 
took a lot of useless arithmetical puzzles and 

* School Document No. 3, 1900. 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 195 

technicalities, of meaningless parsing and para- 
phrasing, of useless geographical statistics, of 
spelling up and spelling down, of deadening 
rereading of a single reader in each grade for 
several years — it took a lot of such time-con- 
suming and profitless drill to fill up eight years 
of school life, and to deaden hosts of children's 
interests in intellectual pursuits forever; but 
the time was so consumed and the feat was 
accomplished. 

Again, some of the congestion would be 
relieved, first, if we did not begin formal arith- 
metic until the third year of school, and did 
not continue it as a separate study beyond the 
sixth, except perhaps with a very small time 
allotment ; for both psychological considerations, 
and some practical experiments now under way 
in several places point to the conclusion that, 
if the formal study of arithmetic is begun when 
the children are under eight or nine years of 
age, there is unwise forcing of children's minds, 
and that most of the time so spent is conse- 
quently wasted ; and, further, that in the four 
years from his ninth to his twelfth year inclu- 
sive, a child can and should learn all the arith- 



196 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

metic he needs for the ordinaiy affairs of Hfe and 
for his further progress in mathematics, — namely, 
accuracy and moderate rapidity in the funda- 
mental operations with simple fractions as well 
as whole numbers, percentage and some of its 
simplest applications. All else is technical, to 
be learned in preparation for a calling or in 
that calling itself. Further, all the English 
grammar except the parts of speech and the 
simplest facts of syntax should be omitted. 
Technical English grammar, as such, should be 
confined to the simplest grammatical nomencla- 
ture up to the sixth grade, and should not be 
studied at all thereafter except incidentally as 
needed in English composition, and in connec- 
tion with the study of a foreign language. The 
notion that English grammar teaches English- 
speaking school children to speak and write the 
English language correctly is wholly false. It 
never has done it, and never will. But the 
attempt to make it serve this purpose has wasted 
a larger portion of the valuable time of school 
children than any other subject except arithmetic. 
If you ask me what becomes of the valuable 
" discipline " these studies afford, I reply that 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 197 

most children derive little or no discipline 
from them, because their minds really take but 
slight hold of them ; and when they do, the re- 
sult of the so-called drill is not worth the time 
and effort devoted to it. I have, of course, 
heard children solve arithmetical puzzles and 
parse difficult sentences ; some of them can 
always do it. But before one accords real value 
to such results, one must remember the use- 
lessness of such acquisitions for culture or for 
the ordinary affairs of life, the time consumed 
in getting these results, and especially what the 
pupils are not getting as well as the little they 
do get during the process. Out with half the 
arithmetic and more than half the grammar that 
still remains in our programme of studies, and 
a great step will have been taken toward reliev- 
ing the congestion of the elementary school 
programme ! 

Further, while all the pupils should under- 
take all the elementary school studies, they 
should not all be required to make the same 
attainments. No seventy per cent standard for 
all before they are allowed to pass should be 
set up. Different pupils do not develop so uni- 



198 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

formly, nor do the different powers of the same 
pupil develop so evenly, that all the pupils can 
be required to attain the same standard in a 
given grade, or that any one pupil can do 
equally well in all his studies. On the other 
hand, I think there is little doubt that too many 
studies are sometimes pursued at one time. The 
congestion which now exists in the later years 
of the grammar school could be relieved by as- 
signing some of the studies to a part of the 
year, some to another part, and some to the 
whole year. 

So far I have spoken only of the elementary 
school programmes. But our high school pro- 
grammes also require attention. The demands 
of modern life and the demands of the col- 
leges together constitute more than can be 
satisfactorily accomplished by most pupils in 
four years. Hence the necessity of beginning 
all high school work earlier; or, rather, the ne- 
cessity of planning the school programme so 
that, so far as the subject-matter of instruction 
is concerned, it will be impossible to say where 
the grammar school ends and the high school 
begins. The difference between high school 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 199 

and grammar school work should be chiefly in 
method and not in subject-matter. The transi- 
tion from the systematic but unscientific pur- 
suit of studies, appropriate to the stage of middle 
childhood, to the more precise and more scien- 
tific treatment appropriate to later childhood 
and youth, should be gradual, although it should 
be consciously aimed at. Moreover, the vast 
array of different studies representing the diver- 
sified resources and needs of modern civiliza- 
tion cannot be pursued by any one pupil ; hence 
another difference between grammar and high 
school work is found in the necessity of a 
choice of work by each pupil in accordance 
with his capacities and needs. 

Again, choice of studies — electives in sec- 
ondary education — should cover, not merely 
the kind, but also the number, of studies pur- 
sued by each pupil each year, care being taken 
that each pupil carries as much work at any 
one time as his ability and strength permit. 
There is nothing sacred about four years as 
the normal number of years for earning a high 
school diploma ; nor is there anything sacred 
in fifteen prepared lessons a week for every 



200 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

pupil. But the pupil's health is or should be 
sacred. I am aware that to permit a large 
number of pupils to do what is called partial 
work — to permit a large number of " special 
students " — involves dangers to the school's 
best interests. But I am quite sure that these 
dangers can all be guarded against in practice, 
and that the results would be greatly prized in 
the end. 

And this leads me to speak particularly of the 
effect of our modern school life on the girls. My 
experience and observation have led me to be- 
lieve that the endurance of girls is less than 
that of boys at every age; and that the differ- 
ence in endurance between the two increases 
from about fourteen years of age, the girls 
rapidly falling behind the boys. If this be 
true, ought not the pace of school work for 
girls to be slower .always than for boys, and 
especially during the high school years? And 
can we not insist that teachers, parents, and the 
girls themselves shall recognize this natural limi- 
tation of their pov/ers ? It seems to me we ought 
to insist that most girls shall take five years to 
do the work that boys do in four, Le. that they 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 201 

shall take fewer studies per year. This would 
not be a mark of, or a confession of, intellectual 
inferiority of the girls, but a recognition of the 
fundamental difference between boys and girls 
which it is almost criminal to disregard. In Mas- 
sachusetts the number of girls who suffer from 
nervous disorders and even from nervous pros- 
tration about the time they get ready to enter 
college, or while in college, is alarmingly large. 

There is another defect of our programmes 
of studies that I must speak of, briefly at least. 
One of the ideals of the American public school 
is that it shall provide equal opportunities for 
all. Yet at two points in the programme of 
studies we have thus far conspicuously failed to 
make, or at least we have not provided, such 
opportunities. We have not provided oppor- 
tunity for elementary technical training at the 
upper end of the grammar school for those who 
know they are not going to the high school, nor 
at the upper end of the high scho.ol for those 
whose school education must cease on gradua- 
tion. Higher technical training at public expense 
is provided in the schools of law, medicine (in- 
cluding dentistry), pharmacy, agriculture, and 



202 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

commerce in our State universities, and some of 
this higher technical training is offered in some 
city institutions. We have thus provided for the 
free vocational training of those who can manage 
to continue their school careers beyond the " com- 
mon school " period. But until very recently we 
have universally ignored elementary vocational 
training in our public schools for that great 
majority of the population who must go to work 
at the end of the grammar school stage, and 
almost to the same extent for the smaller majority 
of those who can continue beyond the grammar 
school, but must go to work on leaving the high 
school. In this country we are only just begin- 
ning to consider seriously the problem of appro- 
priate elementary technical education. In other 
countries, France, for example, the so-called 
" higher primary " schools have long been estab- 
lished for the technical training of boys of from 
thirteen to sixteen or seventeen years of age in 
various callings — agriculture, horticulture, the 
manufacturing and building trades. Appropriate 
vocational training is also provided in similar 
schools for girls ; and in each case the instruction 
is adapted to local needs, ix. is agricultural, 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 203 

industrial, or commercial, in accordance with the 
dominant pursuits of the locality. 

We seem to hesitate about such training at 
public expense because it is useful ! Indeed, we 
have beaten about the bush a good deal to find 
other than utilitarian arguments to support the 
plea for instruction in sewing, cooking, house- 
hold sanitation, and decoration — the household 
arts generally. I am prepared to admit that these 
pursuits have important general educational 
value. But the chief reason why they should be 
taught is their supreme usefulness to everybody, 
not less universally useful in their own sphere 
than reading, writing, and ciphering — the 
"school arts" — are in theirs. 

I hope we shall soon go a step farther, there- 
fore, and make liberal provision for elementary 
training in agricultural, industrial, and commer- 
cial pursuits, in addition to general manual train- 
ing at the upper end of the grammar school and 
also at the upper end of the high school. This 
is a new " enrichment " of the programme of 
study, much needed. And it will not add to the 
burdens of the pupils. ' Many, probably most, of 
those who cannot go on to the high school, should 



204 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

choose, instead of a foreign language in the last 
two years of the grammar school, where, as I have 
already suggested, high school work should begin, 
some form of technical training in harmony with 
their capacity and future needs. I do not believe 
it necessary for this purpose that every grammar 
school in a city should offer the same kinds of 
technical training. Some grammar schools would 
offer gardening and kindred instruction, and 
others would offer plumbing or carpentry, or tool- 
making, or millinery ; still others would offer one 
or more foreign languages — modern foreign 
languages, of course : the pupils could easily be 
transferred to that school wherein the instruction 
they desire is found. If this is inexpedient or 
impracticable, then let us offer in the evening 
schools such technical instruction as can be 
given. Our present evening schools are too 
often but weak imitations of the day schools. I 
have a sufficiently high regard for the achieve- 
ments of our evening schools ; but at present they 
fail to meet the needs of a large part of the even- 
ing school population. Witness the large classes 
in such institutions as the Drexel Institute in 
Philadelphia, the Cooper Institute in New York, 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 205 

and the evening classes of the Y. M. C. A. and 
other educational philanthropies.^ 

And while I am speaking of evening work 
for the public schools, I wish to refer with great 
satisfaction to the tendency, now becoming com- 
mon, to make the school and the schoolhouse 
a neighborhood centre, — a club for old and 
young, — a means of providing healthy and 
pleasure-giving recreations, as well as educa- 
tional opportunities for all members of the 
community. 

In the light of the foregoing considerations, 
I plead for a wise administration, not for re- 
trenchment of educational opportunity. If, in 
the attempt to make contemporary educational 
opportunity meet varied and comprehensive edu- 
cational needs, we have merely and unwisely 
added to an inappropriate, obsolete, and inade- 
quate, but already strenuous, programme of work, 
our remedy lies, not in a return to the formal 
and barren programme of the past, but in pre- 
venting " hurry " and " cram " by suitable elimi- 
nation of unsuitable subject-matter, and a wise 
distribution of all subjects in each grade, by 

^ Compare Chap. IV, p. 103. 



206 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

suitable adaptation of the work required of each 
pupil to his natural capacity and future needs, 
by a wise use of the principle of choice of 
studies, by a just recognition of the difference 
between the sexes, and by insistence on appro- 
priate provision for wisely directed physical 
training and free play. 

Who would willingly exchange the well-lighted, 
well-warmed, well-ventilated school which we are 
building to-day, with its window boxes and 
aquaria, perhaps its garden, its baths, gymnasium, 
and playground, its well-chosen pictures and 
bits of statuary, its library of choice volumes, 
its laboratories, its well-fitting furniture and ap- 
propriate equipment of all kinds, its atmosphere 
of cheerfulness and interested industry, — who 
would willingly exchange this vision, already 
partially realized to some extent throughout the 
country, with its modern comprehensive pro- 
gramnie of studies which is at once the cause 
and the consequence of all that it promises for 
the enrichment of American life, — who would 
willingly exchange all this for the bare walls 
and their fitting accompaniment, the bare 
skeletons of knowledge, — reading, writing, arith- 



OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 207 

metic, English grammar, statistical geography, 
and scraps of history, to which the schoolroom 
and the school programme of the past were 
limited ? 

No ; we have made progress. Let us hold 
fast to what we have gained. We have made 
mistakes, and shall continue to make them, of 
course. But we are no longer groping blindly. 
We are learning daily; and our faith, that 
our contemporary endeavor from the kinder- 
garten through the high school is an encour- 
aging approximation to the education at which 
we aim, was never more enlightened or more 
gloriously triumphant than it is to-day. 

As representatives of the teaching profession 
it is our privilege to share the great faith of the 
American people in the inestimable benefits of 
universal education ; this is our solace and our 
inspiration. Are we satisfied with our present 
attainments ? No ; and therein lies our hope of 
permanent growth. We therefore welcome the 
scrutiny and the criticism of the public and 
professional self-criticism, for we know that both 
are but the promise of things hoped for, — better 
schools, better teachers, better results, — a steady 



208 OUR FAITH IN EDUCATION 

approximation to that democratic ideal of educa- 
tion by which every individual may attain his 
fullest self-realization, and at the same time be 
prepared to seek and find his highest satisfac- 
tion in private and public service. 



VII 

OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL 
PROGRESS 



VII 

OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL 
PROGRESS 

In the present chapter I limit myself to dis- 
cussing obstacles to progress in three phases of 
educational activity: the making of school pro- 
grammes or "courses of study"; the organization, 
and administration of school systems ; and the 
training of teachers for elementary and second- 
ary schools ; and of these I shall treat only 
the first in some detail. 

First, the obstacles to improvement in school 
programmes or courses of study. The recent his- 
tory of attempted reforms in school programmes 
is quickly told. About twenty-five years ago the 
elementary school programme, with its narrow 
content and overwhelming emphasis on the 
school arts, — reading, writing, arithmetic, and 
English grammar, — was seen to be inadequate 

211 



212 OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 

and formal. It provided some acquaintance 
with the school arts themselves, but afforded 
little real education. 

Accordingly, rather more than a dozen years 
ago we began to increase the scope of elementary 
school programmes. We sought to improve them 
by " enrichment." To the school arts, the formal 
studies, we added " thought studies," — literature, 
history, nature study, and an improved geog- 
raphy. To the narrow field of the traditional 
arithmetic we added elementary algebra and 
geometry ; we laid more stress on the drawing, 
music, and physical training already represented 
in the schools' occupations ; and we introduced 
manual training, and occasionally a foreign lan- 
guage. But the result was far from satisfactory. 
We had become convinced that enrichment was 
necessary, and had acted on our conviction. But 
the enrichment had involved us in new diffi- 
culties that proved to be formidable obstacles to 
progress. Our programmes were congested, espe- 
cially in those portions of the new programmes 
most affected by enrichment — the earliest and 
the latest pre-high-school grades. The middle 
ground was and remains, justly I think, though 



OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 213 

perhaps not always intentionally, the territory 
where the school arts are supreme. 

Then it seemed that the elimination of " non- 
essentials" from the old programmes would solve 
our difficulties. Such elimination, it was asserted, 
must precede and accompany enrichment — which 
was true ; and it was also announced, with some- 
thing of a flourish and a good deal of insistence, 
that " correlation " would accomplish the rest. 
Correlation was interpreted to mean such a 
grouping of the subject-matter that each study 
could and should be so pursued as to cover, 
incidentally, adequate instruction in others. Ex- 
amples of such grouping would be history and 
geography, history and literature, reading and 
" nature study," nature study and arithmetic, 
English grammar and foreign language, element- 
ary algebra and geometry and arithmetic, manual 
training and drawing. This solution of our pro- 
gramme difficulties also insisted on a subordi- 
nation of the formal studies to the thought 
studies. The school arts were no longer to be 
pursued solely as ends in themselves, but pri- 
marily as means to ends — as the instruments 
by which education is deepened and ultimately 



214 OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 

extended, but not as embodying an education 
themselves. 

So promising and important did the solution of 
our programme difficulties by means of correla- 
tion seem that, when the Department of Superin- 
tendence of the National Educational Association, 
in 1893, appointed a Committee of Fifteen on 
elementary school studies, it was understood that 
one of the committee's most important duties 
should be to set forth, clearly and in detail, to 
what extent the problem of our programme diffi- 
culties could be solved by correlation. The Sub- 
committee on Correlation of the Committee of 
Fifteen did not solve this problem, however, nor 
did they attempt it — although they did some- 
thing of as great or greater importance, as I shall 
point out later on ; and to this day we are with- 
out the guidance that a thoroughgoing study of 
the interrelations of the elementary school studies 
would afford. I mean such a study as would 
show to what extent parts of any one of them 
are naturally, necessarily, and adequately covered 
in the satisfactory pursuit of another or others. 
This important study is still awaiting the leisure 
and inclination of broad-minded students will- 



OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 21 5 

ing and able to devote a long period of time 
to it. 

By this time we had attempted " enrichment," 
" elimination," and " correlation," which had 
effected a more or less thoroughgoing revision 
of the programme of elementary studies from 
beginning to end ; and the result was chaos. 
There is no better term to describe the infinite 
variety, complexity, and instability that resulted 
from the successive tinkerings to which the ele- 
mentary school programmes had been subjected. 
And chaotic they remain. But it is no longer 
a discouraging confusion. Before this stage had 
been reached, we gradually came to see that 
what we needed was guiding principles, without 
which it was clear that we should only make 
confusion worse by further changes. 

Out of this demand for guiding principles 
arose the Committee of Fifteen on Elementary 
School Studies, the duties of which, it soon 
appeared, must transcend even the principles that 
underlie programme-making. To make our edu- 
cational endeavor effective, good teaching and 
wise organization and administration are needed, 
as well as good programmes of study based on 



2l6 OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 

sound educational doctrine. Hence, the Com- 
mittee of Fifteen divided its work into three 
sections, covering respectively educational doc- 
trine, the training of teachers, and the organiza- 
tion and administration of school systems. 

Before the elementary school programmes had 
been transformed to any considerable extent, and 
while they were still substantially what they had 
been since the beginning of the last century, 
strong dissatisfaction had been felt with the 
narrow training furnished by our secondary 
schools. Although designed to meet the needs 
of all who could prolong their school education 
beyond the elementary school stage, our second- 
ary school programmes were determined chiefly 
by the small fraction of this number who could 
go beyond the secondary school to the college. 
Until within the last ten years, preparation for 
a college course leading to the Bachelor of Arts 
degree was everywhere either strictly limited to 
little else than a drill in the elements of Latin, 
Greek, and mathematics, or such modifications 
of these requirements as made it more difficult 
to prepare for college with the alternatives than 
with the traditional requirements; and, as just 



OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 217 

stated, these subjects occupied the Hon's share 
of time and attention in most secondary schools. 
The narrow and formal character of such a 
secondary education was gradually perceived 
to be, like the elementary education that pre- 
ceded it, chiefly preparation for education, not 
education itself. The elementary school deferred 
the pupil's real education to the secondary 
school ; the secondary school deferred it, once 
more, to the college. 

Consequently we began to transform the sec- 
ondary school programme as well as the element- 
ary school programme — by enrichment. All this 
was gradual, but none the less real. As it pro- 
ceeded, it became evident that no pupil could 
do serious work in the modern subjects and at 
the same time continue his classics. Twenty-five 
years ago we already had a bifurcation of the 
programme into classical and non-classical di- 
visions or "courses of study," dating from 182 1, 
when the Boston " English High School " was 
established for those boys who were not going 
to college; and this bifurcation gradually de- 
veloped into a division of the programme into 
several parallel groups or "courses of study," 



21 8 OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 

each group or "course " consisting of a com- 
bination of studies comprising both, or one, or 
neither of the classical languages. To obtain 
the diploma of the school the pupil m.ust select 
his group or " course of study," and adhere to 
it throughout the usual four years of secondary 
work. The prestige of the traditional classical 
studies was, however, so great that the non- 
classical divisions were for a time inferior to the 
others, and on this account they were avoided 
by the socially and intellectually ambitious pupils. 
The inferiority of non-classical studies has rapidly 
diminished, however, because of a more just ap- 
preciation of the intrinsic value of those studies, 
and a great improvement in the method of teach- 
ing them, and particularly because of a growing 
recognition of them by the colleges for college 
admission purposes. 

We had now transformed our secondary school 
programme by " enrichment " and by a multipli- 
cation of " courses of study." And these changes 
had led gradually and naturally to the elective 
system. The result was, however, far from satis- 
factory, (i) because the courses consisting of the 
modern studies were in dignity and seriousness 



OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 219 

of pursuit too often inferior to the classical 
course, and (2) because these courses could not 
be brought up to the standard of excellence of 
the classical course until the conventional esti- 
mate of the efficiency of a school by the com- 
munity should be based on its general excellence, 
and not chiefly on its success in preparing pupils 
for college through the classical course. That is 
to say, our programme changes had grown out of 
the demand for a good secondary education for 
every pupil, whether he went to college or not. 
A natural corollary to this demand was that just 
as good work should be done in non-classical as' 
in classical courses of study. But this demand 
had not been satisfied. 

Out of this demand arose the report of the 
Committee of Ten. That report was to tell us 
how to combine a good modern with a good 
classical education ; to tell us what a good non- 
classical secondary education is ; and finally to 
promote uniformity among college admission re- 
quirements throughout the country. And this 
it attempted to do. The attempt was made to 
give expression to a body of educational authority 
on the scope of each of the " principal studies " 



220 OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 

that had come to be generally recognized as 
appropriate to secondary education ; on the time 
that should be devoted to each of them ; and on 
the best methods of teaching them ■ — all this 
whether a given study was to be used for college 
admission purposes or not. The report was a 
magnificent document. For the first time in the 
history of American education the attempt was 
made through the National Educational Associa- 
tion to give collective expression to eminent pro- 
fessional authority on an educational question. 
The influence of the report was decided, im- 
mediate, and far-reaching. Its good effect on 
secondary school programmes was felt every- 
where ; but it probably benefited the smaller high 
schools of the country most by suggesting the 
desirability of limiting the scope of their work 
to what could be adequately accomplished, and 
by emphasizing the important principles of con- 
tinuity and adequate intensiveness in the pursuit 
of all studies undertaken. 

The Committee of Ten did not, however, 
define what a good modern secondary educa- 
tion is, except as that definition was implied in 
the programmes recommended by them. The 



OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 221 

report was lacking in an illuminating, well- 
defended educational doctrine; it was rich in 
educational authority. It did, however, state 
two principles of procedure so clearly and em- 
phatically that they could not be missed or 
misunderstood, namely: (i) that most of the 
studies theretofore regarded as secondary school 
studies should be begun by pupils before the 
secondary school was reached ; and (2) that 
a study should receive precisely the same treat- 
ment for pupils who are not going to college 
as for those who are. These two principles 
were intended to promote the solution of two 
important difficulties in programme-making that 
the rapid changes in both elementary and 
secondary school programmes had developed, 
namely, the articulation of elementary to sec- 
ondary education, and the articulation of the 
secondary school to the college, respectively. 

The enunciation of the first of these prin- 
ciples did much to promote desirable pro- 
gramme changes in pre-high-school grades, 
although it found rather scant recognition in 
the report of the Committee of Fifteen, which, 
as everybody knows, was prepared after the 



222 OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 

report of the Committee of Ten. The second 
principle has also found general acceptance 
throughout the country. It has promoted the 
widespread consciousness of their function as 
independent educational institutions which 
the secondary schools now possess and main- 
tain ; it has been emphasized in another im- 
portant report, the report of the Committee on 
College Entrance Requirements; and finally its 
influence has been felt by the colleges them- 
selves, which now manifest a steadily growing 
inclination to accept the proposition that any 
good secondary education, either with or with- 
out the classics, is a good preparation for 
college. 

This last point — the present attitude of the 
colleges — received special treatment in the 
latest of the three reports on school studies 
emanating from the National Educational As- 
sociation, namely, the report of the Committee 
on College Entrance Requirements. The de- 
mand for guidance in our educational endeavor 
had now reached the point at which it was 
felt that a general improvement in secondary 
education would result if we could establish 



OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 223 

national norms or units of work for each 
study, each of which, no matter what the study, 
might be accepted by any college toward satis- 
fying its admission requirements. The attempt 
to formulate these norms was made by the 
Committee on College Entrance Requirements. 
This report was another comprehensive and de- 
cidedly creditable attempt to bring order out of 
chaos ; this time especially by the articulation of 
secondary to collegiate education. Incidentally 
also, in no small degree, it has tended to over- 
throw shams and superficial work by setting 
up a reasonable standard of achievement by 
units of work in all secondary schools through- 
out the country. 

Now, it is clear that all this while, amid the 
chaos of experimentation and imitation in school 
programmes, what we have been seeking is 
guidance. Out of this demand for guidance 
have arisen the three reports already referred 
to. Out of the same demand has arisen in 
this country, during the last ten years, a 
volume of educational literature in periodicals, 
books, and special reports by individuals and 
associations, the like of which for quality 



224 OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 

and quantity we have never seen before. The 
question which we have to ask ourselves is 
this : Why is it that after twenty or thirty 
years of unparalleled educational interest and 
activity there is still so much vagueness about 
our aims, so much indecision about the adap- 
tation of means to ends (programmes and 
methods), and so much uncertainty about our 
results, that even to-day we still seem, as of 
old, " always bound nowhere under full sail " ? 
I think the answer is found in a single sen- 
tence : We have not yet organized our educa- 
tional doctrine^ we have only forinulated it 
piecemeal ; and we have not organized our edu- 
cational experience — we have not gathered the 
fruits of experience as we wejit aloitg. 

Each of the documents to which reference 
has been made, for example, is an isolated 
piece of work, with but little reference to, and 
certainly without any correlation with, the 
others. Each of them was formulated as if 
there were no other educational literature de- 
serving recognition for work done in its own 
field, or to which its own peculiar subject-matter 
sustained important relations. A similar state- 



OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 225 

merit applies, almost to the same extent, to the 
writers of the great body of the educational 
literature referred to. Each writer seems to re- 
gard himself as having received a special reve- 
lation of the educational gospel, vouchsafed to 
him alone ; so completely do most of them ignore 
their fellow-prophets, who of course reciprocate 
by similar apparent indifference. 

I have already said that the significance 
of the v/ork of the Sub-committee on Cor- 
relation of the Committee of Fifteen lies in 
the fact that they — or rather he ^ — declined 
to bring order out of chaos by a more or 
less mechanical readjustment of the conven- 
tionally accepted studies of the elementary 
school programme. Dr. Harris set himself the 
task of setting forth an educational doctrine — 
the task of formulating the guiding principles 
that underlie educational endeavor. He there- 
fore pushed the study of correlation beyond a 
mere inquiry into the relief of congested pro- 
grammes by means of a readjustment of the 
various branches of study to each other, to a 

1 Hon. Wm. T. Harris, United States Commissioner of Edu- 
cation, chairman of the sub-committee. 

Q 



226 OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 

more fundamental inquiry, namely: What is 
the educational significance of each study? 
What contribution ought each study to make 
to the education of a modern child ? What is 
the educational value of each study in correlat- 
ing the individual to the civilization of his 
time ? 

That this was the problem of problems was 
clear to most persons as soon as it had been 
pointed out, and after the disappointment over 
what the report did not do had subsided. If 
further proof is needed, it is furnished by the 
fact that to-day the progress we are making 
and the obstacles we encounter in planning our 
school programmes all centre in the problems 
of educational aims and educational values. 
When we, teachers and laymen, see clearly what 
an equipment for modern life means ; how much 
of this equipment it is feasible and desirable to 
attempt in the elementary school ; and what 
each branch of study contributes in knowledge 
and power to this equipment ; we shall possess 
the key to the solution of our programme diffi- 
culties, whether they pertain to the distribution 
and interrelation of studies and time allotment, 



OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 227 

or to adaptation to local needs, equipment, or 
teaching force. 

Dr. Harris's report was and is, therefore, a 
great report. But it has a great weakness : it 
is the work of but one man — a strong man, 
but nevertheless only one. The report could, 
therefore, possess only the strength of that one 
man. It came with the accumulated momentum 
of years of educational leadership on the part 
of its author. Nevertheless, it was not and 
could not be generally accepted as a contem- 
porary solution of the important problem with 
which it deals. It had paid too little heed to 
earlier and contemporary discussion of the same 
problem. It did not adequately represent col- 
lective professional insight. 

The earlier report — that of the Committee 
of Ten — and the later report — that of the 
Committee on College Entrance Requirements 
— did not possess this particular weakness. 
The report of the Committee of Ten presented 
an overwhelming array of educational authority, 
and had in consequence, as already remarked, 
an important and widespread influence in pro- 
moting the improvement of secondary school 



228 OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 

programmes. The fundamental weakness of that 
report consists in the absence of a thoroughgoing 
formulation and exposition of contemporary edu- 
cational doctrine, to which all good secondary 
school programmes must conform. Had the 
report set forth such an educational theory, its 
strength would have been seen to lie chiefly 
in Table I, and not in the subsequent tables, 
and least of all in the specimen programmes of 
Table IV. Yet so strong a hold had the habit 
of programme-making acquired that those pro- 
grammes were seized upon as the real fruit of 
the committee's labors. Table I not only em- 
bodied the important articulation of secondary 
to elementary and college education, to which 
reference has been made above, but also ex- 
hibited the subjects that ninety well-selected 
professional teachers regarded as essential to 
a satisfactory modern school education. Table 
I therefore embodied the real results of the 
committee's labors, and not Table IV. No 
one saw more clearly than the chairman of the 
committee that the programmes of Table IV 
could not be a permanent solution of secondary 
school programme difficulties. President Eliot 



OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 229 

said repeatedly that he regarded them merely 
as " scaffolding," as temporary structures ; that 
they must give way to other and better ones 
as soon as further study should make clear just 
what selections and combinations from Table 
I schools could offer, or local or individual 
needs should demand ; and this view is clearly 
indicated in the remarks of the committee on 
Tables II and III (pp. 37-44). 

Had the Committee on Correlation of Studies 
" correlated " its report with the work already 
done by the Committee of Ten, the result would 
have been a much more important and service- 
able document than either produced alone. 
Educational theory based on experience and re- 
flection would have criticised and illuminated 
educational authority based chiefly on experi- 
ence ; and out of the two might have been 
produced a body of educational principles, the 
overwhelming weight of which in directing edu- 
cational practice would no doubt be conspicu- 
ous everywhere. That is to say, such a body 
of educational principles could not fail to unify 
our educational endeavor by a general adher- 
ence to common aims clearly understood, while 



230 OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 

it would not attempt to make it uniform in 
respect to either means or methods. In the 
absence of such generally acceptable unifying 
educational principles, our experiments in pro- 
gramme-making have continued to be largely 
imitative instead of intelligent, and hence our 
programmes are unstable to the last degree. 

In the report of the Committee on College 
Entrance Requirements we have again an im- 
portant document that pays little heed to the 
work of its predecessors, and once more collects 
contemporary educational opinion </^ novo. The 
Committee on College Entrance Requirements 
had the advantage, however, of formulating its 
resolutions in the light of the opinion and ex- 
perience that had followed the publication of 
the two earlier reports, although there was no 
explicit attempt to correlate the work of the 
committee with that of either the Committee 
of Ten or the Committee of Fifteen. Its most 
important contributions to guiding principles 
are its approval of electives in secondary school 
programmes, its recommendation of a unified 
six-years' high school course, its emphatic insist- 
ence that any study well taught during a suflS- 



OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 23 1 

ciently long period should be accepted toward 
satisfying college admission requirements, and 
its attempt to define national norms or units of 
work in the several studies of the secondary 
school programmes. 

As already stated, I think the influence of 
the report of the Committee on College En- 
trance Requirements, like that of its prede- 
cessors, has been considerable. Besides the 
good it has accomplished, it has, however, like 
those other reports, also complicated the educa- 
tional situation by not explicitly taking into 
account what the earlier reports had done ; 
and in failing to incorporate as explicitly in 
its resolutions and expositions the cumulative 
influence of the best educational literature that 
had developed since the agitation which led to 
the other two reports commenced. Like the 
others, the report of the Committee on College 
Entrance Requirements is therefore an isolated 
document. Like them it must fail to exert, 
as it might, that unifying influence for guidance 
which we need so much, and which is still a 
consummation devoutly to be wished. 

Incidentally these three reports have failed in 



232 OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 

another way to become the unifying influence 
which they might and should have become. 
Each of them not only ignored the other two, 
but each of them set itself the impossible task of 
solving programme difhculties by studying only a 
limited portion of the pupil's educational career. 
Once at work, however, each committee found it 
impossible to limit its field so narrowly. The 
Committee on Correlation necessarily dealt, inci- 
dentally, with secondary school problems, and the 
other two committees similarly found it necessary 
to consider, to some extent at least, problems of 
elementary education. Taking the three reports 
together, there is probably no single defect that 
has been so effective an obstacle to their use for 
guidance as this want of unification of their 
subject-matter in harmony with the interdepen- 
dence of the problems with which they deal. 
We have had a body of educational doctrine that 
covered elementary education, and one that cov- 
ered secondary education, as if the two were dis- 
tinct and independent. We need an educational 
doctrine that covers the entire school period, and 
so may serve as a guide to practise throughout 
the pupil's school career. 



OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 233 

We are, therefore, still seeking definite guid- 
ance. The want of it has led and still leads to 
economic and educational waste ; and hence to 
uneasiness and vacillation within the teaching 
profession and dissatisfaction in the community. 
How can we expect the great body of teachers to 
accept the programme changes which we recom- 
mend in the only spirit that will render them 
valuable — the spirit of interested, or at least in- 
telligent, cooperation — as long as we have no 
such definite guidance ? How can we expect 
the community to be impressed with the wisdom 
of changes that run counter to all tradition, to be 
interested in them, and to display the patience 
that must be exercised before such changes can 
commend themselves alike to all concerned ? 
And how can we expect the schools to be free 
from persistent, usually well-meant, but perni- 
cious meddling with the details of school work 
by school committees, parents, newspapers, and 
other lay influences ? 

The remedy for such obstacles is not far to 
seek, but experience thus far seems to show that 
it is difficult to secure. It is this: we need a 
new formulation of contemporary educational 



234 OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 

doctrine that will serve to clarify our own con- 
ception of what a modern education means, and 
therefore serve as a guide to intelligent, coopera- 
tive, and prolonged experimentation on a large 
scale. Such a formulation of educational doc- 
trine would be based on our present knowledge 
of social needs ; and it would be formulated in 
the light of the best educational literature that 
the last dozen years or so have brought forth, to 
say nothing of the educational classics of earlier 
generations. Such a body of educational doc- 
trine would be more generally and more seriously 
studied than any formulation of educational doc- 
trine has ever been studied ; and it could, there- 
fore, be expected to furnish an insight and a 
purpose into the now too generally imitative and 
chaotic experiments in programme-making with 
which we are familiar. Educational experiments 
are desirable and inevitable ; my plea is for a 
more rational experimentation than we have yet 
had ; and, as I shall point out in a moment, for 
an experimentation that enables us to gather the 
fruits of experience as we go along. 

With an educational doctrine thoroughly as- 
similated and consciously adhered to — no mat- 



OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 235 

ter whether it achieves universal acceptance in 
all its details or not — superintendents, princi- 
pals, and teachers can face the community with a 
professional consciousness that must triumph 
over ignorant or meddlesome obstructions, re- 
peatedly break down indifference, and occasion- 
ally promote enthusiastic cooperation, until it is 
clear just what can and cannot be achieved by it. 
By that time we would demand a fresh formula- 
tion of our educational doctrine ; new^ experiments 
would follow, but not a repetition of former 
errors. In this way progress would be steady 
and sure, in spite of errors ; not random, hap- 
hazard, and uncertain, as it must be now. It 
appears, therefore, that we need to repeat our 
formulation of educational doctrine at intervals 
— say once in ten years — often enough to em- 
body in it the new insight that changing social 
needs, a careful study of the best educational 
literature, and our practical experiments afford. ^ 
But a satisfactory educational doctrine is not 
enough to promote educational progress. Doc- 
trine must achieve success in application over a 
wide area to be really effective. Now, just as we 
have not organized and adequately assimilated a 



236 OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 

generally accepted educational doctrine, so we 
are without a body of recorded educational ex- 
perience. Results actually achieved and collec- 
tively presented constitute a force that is capable 
of sweeping away superficial criticism and paralyz- 
ing scepticism on the one hand, or meddlesome 
interference and impatient clamoring for prema- 
ture results on the other. Isolated successes 
have been advertised, to be sure ; and failures, 
more or less obvious, have sometimes been 
frankly confessed, and sometimes unwisely sup- 
pressed. But in neither case have we had an 
orderly presentation of both successes and fail- 
ures over a wide area. We have had plenty of 
experiments ; indeed, as I have intimated, our 
whole educational activity for nearly a generation 
has consisted of experiments. But we have had 
little cooperation. Just as every educational 
theorizer has worked by himself without taking 
due account of the labors of his fellow-workers in 
the same field, so every superintendent has pur- 
sued his way apparently in blissful indifference 
to what his fellow-superintendents were doing, 
multiplying instances and varying conditions ad 
libitum. How is it possible to extract any con- 



OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 237 

firmation of alleged results from such a heteroge- 
neous procedure ? And we never can get such 
confirmation until we abandon our absurd ex- 
treme of individualism in these experiments and 
work together for the attainment of the same 
ends. No physicist or biologist would ignore 
his fellow-workers in the way here condemned. 
When Roentgen announced his discovery, other 
physicists confirmed his discovery. The facts of 
embryology and their bearing on the theory of 
evolution were similarly confirmed by each biolo- 
gist under the conditions which led to their 
discovery. The principles of science once estab^^ 
lished in this way, no one can doubt or belittle 
them. Each experimenter, then, sees clearly 
what conditions must be observed to secure 
certain results, and the application of principles 
proceeds intelligently, no matter how varied the 
circumstances under which the application is 
made. So must it be in education, if we are 
ever to escape from the quagmire of random 
and isolated experimenting in which each worker 
seeks to find the way out for himself, disregarding 
the landmarks and sign-posts that have already 
been set up by his predecessors. Briefly, then, 



238 OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 

we must organize our educational experience 
just as we must organize our educational doc- 
trine, if we are to make real progress. 

Let me give two or three illustrations of what 
I mean. Every school system having five thou- 
sand or more children, and many smaller ones, 
is and should be, among other things, an edu- 
cational experiment station. Suppose that in 
twenty-five school systems of this country the 
attempt were made by the superintendents acting 
together, under ordinary conditions of teaching 
and equipment, to discover just what the accom- 
plishment in the three R's is with a given time 
allotment, agreement having previously been 
reached, for the sake of the experiment, as to 
the conditions under which the experiment was 
to be tried. Suppose the conditions to be some- 
thing like this: five hundred or a thousand 
pupils in each city to begin the study of arith- 
metic in the first year ; a similar number to be- 
gin it in the second year ; and a third similar 
group to begin it in the third year of school. 
At the end of the sixth year of school compare 
the attainments of the three groups of pupils. 
Would not the conclusions reached by such ex- 



OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 239 

periments have a convincing value which no 
amount of assertion beginning " in my schools," 
or " so far as my experience goes," or " I believe," 
or " in my opinion," could possibly have ? 

Suppose, again, that in the same twenty-five 
school systems the study of algebra, geometry, 
foreign languages, and elementary natural sci- 
ence were undertaken in two pre-high-school 
grades, with substantially the same aims, equip- 
ment (books and apparatus), time allotment, and 
teaching force. That is to say, suppose that it 
were understood that these studies, if undertaken 
at all in pre-high-school grades, were to be under- 
taken seriously. Suppose, further, that this ex- 
periment were continued for not less than five 
years. If the twenty-five superintendents should 
then make a collective report on the results of 
the work, would not such a report have an over- 
whelming force in determining public opinion 
within and without the profession, making future 
progress less doubtful and future experiments 
more profitable than is now the case ? 

Or, again, suppose that our contemporary in- 
dependent experiments with the elective system 
were correctly reported on and the results so far 



240 OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 

attained duly appraised by competent investiga- 
tors. Would it not be possible to find twenty- 
five important schools that, for the sake of the 
educational interests at stake, would be willing 
to sink minor individual differences in the ad- 
ministration of the elective system and consent 
to act together? Or, if we couldn't get twenty- 
five, could we get ten schools to undertake this 
cooperative enterprise for at least five years ? 

I do not believe that such cooperation is 
impossible. Why should it be ? Experiments 
similar to those suggested are everywhere in 
progress ; cooperation in large enterprises of all 
kinds is possible. Why should it be impossible 
only in education ? Under such circumstances 
we could face the profession and the public 
with facts, instead of opinions. The enormous 
difference between the weight of these two very 
different things in educational affairs still re- 
mains to be experienced. 

When we consider the obstacles to progress 
in the organization and administration of school 
systems, we find them similar to the obstacles 
already considered in the fields of educational 
theory and practice, although not identical with 



OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 24 1 

them. We have two important documents em- 
bodying collective expression of opinion on wise 
and efficient organization and administration, but 
we lack any collective presentation of recorded 
experience. We have one important document 
on organization and administration in the report 
of the Committee of Fifteen, and another in the 
report of the Chicago school commission. What 
we need is a clear statement of the improvements 
effected in various cities throughout the country 
during the last six or eight years ; of the old 
difficulties that remain unsolved, and of the new 
difficulties encountered in attempting to carry 
out the revised administrative policy. The col- 
lected experience of Toledo, St. Louis, Cleveland, 
Indianapolis, New Haven, New York, and the 
proposed plans for reorganization in Chicago, 
Boston, Detroit, and other cities, afford material 
for such a presentation of a wise administrative 
policy, and the beneficent results that flow from 
it, or to be expected from it, as we have not had 
and could not have until now. Shall we not 
take steps to procure it? 

The chief obstacles in the way of better or- 
ganization and administration of our city school 



242 OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 

systems are the failure of the public to recognize 
the educational expert as such, and the corre- 
sponding unwillingness to trust him when found. 
The chief reasons why this recognition of tech- 
nical knowledge and skill in the field of educa- 
tion is too often difficult to secure, and the 
wisdom of following the professional leadership 
is not realized, are: (i) the unfortunate lack of 
a genuine professional knowledge and a well- 
considered administrative policy on the part of 
many superintendents, even when they have had 
much practical experience ; and (2) the want of 
courage and initiative on the part of many well- 
equipped and otherwise efficient superintendents. 
Such men fail to enlighten their respective con- 
stituencies on what a wise organization and ad- 
ministration means, and also fail to insist, even to 
the point of self-sacrifice, that such an organiza- 
tion and administration shall prevail. In other 
words, the teaching profession cannot expect 
recognition for professional knowledge and skill 
until its members take pains to possess it, and 
unless they possess also the energy and the cour- 
age of their convictions. Lawyers, physicians, 
and engineers were not accorded professional 



OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 243 

standing, could not achieve the confidence of the 
public they wished to serve, until they could 
prove by their practice, based on adequate train- 
ing, that they deserved it; and so it is in our 
profession. All teachers, but especially superin- 
tendents, must show their fitness to lead, not 
merely by an apparently successful routine prac- 
tice of their profession, but by a professional ca- 
reer that is based on a professional consciousness 
born of adequate training — a training that lends 
significance to every phase of practice and fur- 
nishes a safeguard against the presumptuous or 
ignorant assumption of technical duties by either 
meddlesome and spoils-hunting or well-meaning 
but misguided laymen in educational affairs. 
With a professional consciousness born of a 
professional equipment, lay interference in organ- 
ization and administration will not be tolerated. 
Courage to insist on what ought to be done will 
be as natural and easy for the superintendent and 
principal as for lawyers, physicians, and engi- 
neers to insist on the wisest measures in their 
several fields. And, so far as self-sacrifice is 
concerned, are we not justified in saying, at 
least to the younger superintendents : Do not 



244 OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 

court opposition ; try to cultivate public opinion 
in behalf of wise measures ; be patient and long- 
suffering, but in the end you can afford to lose 
your place, if it comes to that, because you insist 
on what is right. The man who loses his place 
because he insists courteously, intelligently, pa- 
tiently — in a word, wisely — will not need to 
wait long for employment. We are fortunately 
not without illustrations of the truth of this 
proposition and of the practical wisdom of the 
recommendation based on it. 

A few words in regard to the obstacles to 
progress in the third division of the educational 
field mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, 
namely, the training of teachers for elementary 
and secondary schools. 

The greatest obstacles to real progress in the 
training of elementary teachers are want of 
scholarship on the part of both students and 
teachers in normal schools, and the want of in- 
sistence on good professional training by school 
officers and employers of teachers. 

We have had at least two authoritative docu- 
ments emanating recently from the National Edu- 
cational Association which set forth the aims, 



OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 245 

equipment, and methods that should prevail in 
normal schools for the training of elementary 
school teachers. And there seems to be sub- 
stantial agreement as to the advisability and 
feasibility of the practical realization of what 
these documents recommend. We have a normal 
school doctrine that seems to be fairly acceptable, 
but have we a normal school practice in harmony 
therewith, or an adequate normal school practice 
anyway .f* It is not uncommon to hear the nor- 
mal schools and their product disparaged. What 
ground, if any, is there for such disparagement? 
Has anybody collected the testimony of superin- 
tendents and other competent persons concerning 
the relative efficiency of teachers trained in our 
normal schools and of teachers not so trained.? 
What agency, either by states or otherwise, has 
set itself the task of ascertaining the actual work- 
ing efficiency of our normal schools ? If we had 
a thoroughgoing report on that subject, say from 
a dozen normal schools chosen from the country 
at large — such a report could be made without 
mentioning in the report the name of a single 
school — what an incentive it would afford to 
efficiency! How clearly it might show just what 



246 OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 

the obstacles are that thwart or obstruct the 
progress of their work, or sometimes defeat it 
altogether ! On the basis of such a report, public 
opinion within and without the teaching profes- 
sion would soon demand the best professional 
training attainable, and unwavering recognition 
of it when obtained. 

What I have just said about the failure to de- 
mand adequate scholarship of elementary school 
teachers cannot be asserted to the same extent in 
the case of secondary school teachers. But, much 
more than in the case of elem.entary school 
teachers do we find the lack of a demand for 
adequate professional, ix. technical, training in 
addition to scholarship. Nothing is a more 
obstructive influence in secondary education than 
the want of proper professional training of the 
teachers. Of course they will not seek such 
training until it is demanded, not in a half-hearted 
and after-all-it-doesn't-matter-much sort of a way, 
but in an unmistakable, insistent fashion. If you 
as superintendents have no confidence in what 
you think we who are training secondary school 
teachers are doing, take steps to find out what we 
are doing, tell us our shortcomings, and point out 



OBSTACLES TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 247 

what you believe ought to be added to what we 
are now doing. As soon as your demand for the 
right kind of professional training for secondary 
school teachers is strong, persistent, and wide- 
spread, such training will be forthcoming. At 
present a college student who has taken pains to 
add technical training for his profession to his 
academic attainments finds himself just as likely 
to be passed by in the competition for places as 
one who has not. 

Once more, then, I hope that we shall erelong 
take steps to organize our contemporar\' edu- 
cational doctrine and our practical experience in 
some such way as has been suggested in this 
chapter ; and I comm.end to all workers in the 
field of education the words of the Chinese dele- 
gate to the peace conference at The Hague ! 
That conference, it will be recalled, took place 
shortly after Admiral Dewey had destroyed the 
Spanish fleet at Manila. The Chinese delegate 
to the peace conference listened to the eloquence 
of his colleagues for some time, and then re- 
marked, "Too much talkee, talkee ; too little 
Dewey, do-ee." 



VIII 

EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY 
STUDY AND THE PROFESSIONAL 
TRAINING OF COLLEGE-BRED 
TEACHERS 



VIII 

EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY 
STUDY AND THE PROFESSIONAL 
TRAINING OF COLLEGE-BRED 
TEACHERS 

The study of Education in the United States 
has a very brief history. Three periods are 
easily distinguishable. There is, first, the 
normal school period which began in 1839, 
when the first state normal school in the coun- 
try was founded, in Massachusetts — the period 
during which the normal school for the train- 
ing of elementary school teachers was the only 
institution in which education was seriously 
studied. There is, next, the period of the col- 
lege or university department of Education, 
which began in 1879 when a professorship "of 
the science and the art of teaching " was estab- 
lished in the University of Michigan.^ With 

1 Other colleges and universities had attempted similar profes- 
sorships before this time; but none of them developed perma- 
nence. 

251 



252 EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 

this period colleges and universities begin to 
give their students who intend to teach in- 
struction in the history, theory, and practice of 
Education, and to college-bred teachers already 
in service who seek promotion, an opportunity 
to study their profession under guidance. The 
third period is the period of the university 
" School of Education," which began in 1898 
with the assimilation of Teachers College in 
New York City to Columbia University.^ This 
period marks the advent of a professional school 
for the training of teachers which is ultimately 
destined to be of equal rank with other profes- 
sional schools of university grade. 

Although three periods in the history of the 
study of Education in this country are thus 
easily distinguishable, these periods are not 
independent of each other. The college or 
university departments of Education have not 
checked or suppressed the development of nor- 
mal schools, nor has the university school of 
Education had a similar effect on its predeces- 

^ up to the present time (1903) the School of Education of the 
University of Chicago is the only other conspicuous example of a 
university school of Education. 



EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 253 

sors. All three exist side by side, and afford 
important provision for the study of Education 
and the technical training of teachers ; and the 
growth of each has stimulated and promoted 
the growth of the other two. It is probable, 
however, that, ultimately, the University School 
of Education will supplant the chair or depart- 
ment of " Pedagogy," its precursor, especially 
in the urban universities, whatever may happen 
in the colleges. The normal schools will and 
must continue to minister to the needs of that 
great majority of elementary school teachers 
who cannot afford the time and money for a 
college education before entering on the study 
of their profession. 

I do not intend, in this chapter, to trace the 
history of the normal school, interesting as that 
history is. But it is pertinent to point out, in 
passing, that although this country early declared 
its faith in Education as a social force and as 
a function of society in the celebrated laws of 
1642 and 1647 passed by the General Court of 
Massachusetts,^ yet the study of this elevating 
and upbuilding force itself, together with the 

1 Cf. page 158. 



254 EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 

study of the wisest means of organizing and 
directing it in the rapidly growing municipali- 
ties of the land, was long neglected. During 
the first half of the nineteenth century, however, 
the persistence and persuasion of Charles Brooks 
and James G. Carter, and the energy and devo- 
tion of Horace Mann — all Massachusetts men 
— made the people conscious of their needs in 
this respect, made them feel that the untrained 
class-room teacher is a menace to the right edu- 
cation of the young, an untrained principal or 
superintendent a blind leader of the blind, alike 
within and without the teaching profession, and 
unenlightened lay opinion in educational affairs 
a sisyphaean stone, a baffling obstruction that 
constantly blocks the path of progress. The 
founding of the first state normal school in 
Lexington, Massachusetts, was, therefore, an 
event of more than local significance. In the 
seventeenth century Massachusetts had laid the 
foundation of the American public school sys- 
tem. In the nineteenth century she founded an 
institution for infusing new life into that system 
for all time to come. 

Great as the services are which the normal 



EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 255 

schools have rendered and are rendering, they 
have been for some time totally inadequate to 
meet our rapidly growing educational needs. 
The normal schools were founded to meet the 
need of properly equipping class-room teachers 
for the elementary schools, and this need they 
have never outgrown and never can ; it is funda- 
mental, imperative, perennial. They have shed 
their beneficent influence over thousands of class 
rooms, and, by making clear the great distinc- 
tion between a trained and an untrained teacher, 
both at the outset and throughout the teacher's 
entire career, they have, almost single-handed, 
gradually transformed the calling of the ele- 
mentary teacher from a mere routine into a 
profession. 

At the same time it is clear, as I have said, 
that the normal school alone is no longer able 
to cope with our rapidly growing needs. As 
long as the type of our schools was a single, 
rather small school, with a simple programme of 
studies, limited chiefly to the school arts of 
reading, writing, and arithmetic, a single teacher 
working by himself could do the work of the 
school fairly well. But the increase of the 



256 EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 

native population and the growth of cities, 
the enormous and steadily increasing influx of 
foreign immigrants, the geographical expansion, 
and the much more important and very great 
commercial and industrial development of the 
country have naturally been followed by our 
huge modern schools, our varied and complex 
programmes of studies, our immense city school 
systems ; and hence a host of new problems 
have come into the educational field, — problems 
with which the mere class-room teacher of 
limited academic training and narrow, even if 
thorough, technical training, is manifestly unable 
to cope satisfactorily. It is true that we have 
many efficient grammar school principals and 
superintendents to-day who have had only a 
normal school training; but in no case are they 
efficient because their training has been limited, 
but in spite of that fact. Moreover, the limita- 
tions of even these efficient but inadequately 
trained school officers have of late become so 
apparent that some cities now decline to appoint 
principals or superintendents who have not had 
a college training as well as technical training 
and successful practical experience. 



EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 257 

At the same time it has been long apparent 
that many college-bred men of excellent scholar- 
ship are poor teachers. The college offered them 
no opportunity to learn how to teach. Indeed, 
so conspicuous was the inability to teach of the 
ordinary college graduate, that many high school 
principals and a great many superintendents of 
schools have preferred to employ normal school 
graduates in high school positions, in spite of 
their limited scholarship. But it was found, of 
course, that teaching power without adequate 
scholarship was largely wasted. At least so 
much general and special education as a college 
course affords is essential to the equipment of 
a high school or academy teacher. The prob- 
lem was to secure, in addition to adequate 
scholarship, appropriate insight into Education 
and technical skill in teaching. This the normal 
school could not and cannot do for the college 
graduate ; first, because the normal school was 
and is naturally and properly concerned chiefly 
with the training of elementary school teachers, 
and has, therefore, usually neither the teaching 
force nor the equipment to deal separately with 
college graduates ; and second, because it was 



258 EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 

not and cannot be profitable to teach, in the 
same classes, college graduates and normal 
school students. The college-bred students are 
too far ahead of the normal school students in 
maturity and general scholarship to make a 
satisfactory combination class. 

Out of these considerations arose the uni- 
versity department of Education or "chair of 
pedagogy." In only a few cases, however, has 
the university department of Education solved 
the problem of technical training for college-bred 
teachers. Teachers of experience, who returned 
to the university to study the history and theory 
of Education, and the organization and adminis- 
tration of school systems, found the instruction 
of any good professor of Education decidedly 
profitable. But neophytes who needed to learn 
how to teach under direction usually failed to 
get what they most needed, — the laboratory 
work of actual teaching under the usual condi- 
tions that prevail in the class room. A few insti- 
tutions, like Harvard University, provided such 
opportunities from almost the very beginning; 
but in most cases it has been found impractica- 
ble. Of course much is done for the would-be 



EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 259 

teacher by instruction in the history of his pro- 
fession and the theory of his art. But unless 
accompanied by suitable laboratory work — 
actual teaching — the most important part of 
a young candidate's training is not obtained. 

But the university department or chair of 
Education has accomplished and is accomplish- 
ing a most important function, quite apart from 
what it may or may not accomplish in the train- 
ing of young teachers. // has made Education 
a university study. 

Apathetic and even hostile faculties have slowly 
yielded the absurd position that they once held, 
namely, that among all the fields of human 
thought and activity Education is the only one 
it is not profitable to study; and this is a great 
gain. The gradual abandonment of false views 
concerning the study of Education by members 
of the faculties of our higher institutions has 
naturally been followed by similar progress on 
the part of the students. To-day, at Harvard 
University, for example, the introductory courses 
in Education are attended, every year, by a con- 
siderable number of future lawyers, doctors, and 
business men who do not care for the technical 



26o EDUCATIOiN AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 

courses pursued by future teachers or school 
officers, but who wish to study the history, 
theory, and, to some extent, the organization of 
Education, just as they study the history and 
theory of economics, — that is, as a part of the 
proper equipment of a Hberally educated man, 
one who expects to be a participator and not 
merely a spectator in the world's most impor- 
tant affairs. 

The university department of Education has 
therefore accomplished several important things. 
It has established the study of Education among 
the branches of a liberal education by the side 
of other social studies, — history, government, 
economics ; it has, at its worst, given college- 
bred teachers an insight into their future profes- 
sion which they formerly could not get at all ; 
that is, it has helped to determine a professional 
attitude and temper of mind of great importance 
for immediate efficiency and steady professional 
growth ; and, at its best, it has done and is still 
doing all that has just been enumerated, and 
provides also actual laboratory work for the 
young teacher — class-room teaching under di- 
rection, amid normal surroundings, over a suffi- 



EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 26 1 

ciently long period of time ; and finally it 
provides suitable training for principals and 
superintendents of schools on the basis of good 
instruction and a comparative study, under direc- 
tion, of schools and school systems in actual 
operation. 

The university department of Education has, 
therefore, contended and, in case of need, still 
contends that Education, like every other impor- 
tant human interest, may be studied advanta- 
geously, to some extent, by every man who aspires 
to general culture. The history of Education is 
an important part of the history of civilization ; 
the general principles of Education determine 
contemporary educational practice in schools and 
colleges, whether the public or teachers and school 
officers adhere consciously to those principles, or 
not ; and the organization and administration of 
schools and school systems are important phases 
of state and municipal affairs. 

Surely the story of the gradual evolution of 
educational needs in successive stages of the 
world's history, of the formulation and exposition 
of those needs in educational classics, and of the 
schools and universities that arose to meet those 



262 EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 

needs — in short, the story of the education that 
humanity has devised in the course of, say, twenty- 
five centuries (to take only the most important 
part of the story), and of the effect of this educa- 
tion on civil, political, and religious development 
— surely this story may well form a part of the 
equipment of a " liberally educated " man, whatever 
his future calling may be. So, too, to gain some 
knowledge of the scope and meaning of 'schools 
and studies, of the aims and methods of contem- 
porary educational practice ; to gain a critical in- 
sight into contemporary educational needs through 
a serious study of the development of the indi- 
vidual on the one hand and of contemporary 
social needs on the other, and hence a just esti- 
mate of the value of our vast, diversified, and costly 
provision for the education of the present genera- 
tion of children and youth — this is worth some 
time and effort on the part of every university stu- 
dent, whether he becomes a teacher or not. And, 
finally, to learn how states and cities seek to 
secure good schools for their children ; to become 
aware of the dangers that constantly menace the 
efficiency of the schools because of faulty organi- 
zation and unwise administration; to study the 



EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 263 

successes and the failures of cities in ridding them- 
selves of bad school systems, and the nature and 
workings of the best systems yet devised — surely 
such study may well attract a college-bred man 
whose influence in municipal affairs and especially 
in educational affairs is certain to be important by 
and by. But if some study of Education in its 
several aspects is advantageous to every cultivated 
man, is it not clear that a thoroughgoing study of 
this subject must be essential to the prospective 
teacher? 

It may clear the ground a bit, if I say, at the 
outset, that one function of a university depart- 
ment of Education is to advise some persons to 
keep out of the teaching profession as well as 
to encourage and seek to equip others to enter 
it. Appropriate personal qualities, together with 
sound general scholarship and special attainments 
in some one field, are indispensable to the highest 
efficiency. Only the best are good enough to be 
intrusted with the important work of teachers. 
Would that we could always secure the best and 
the best only ! 

So much misconception concerning the scope 
and meaning of the university study of Education 



264 EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 

still exists in the minds of intelligent persons that 
one may be pardoned for emphasizing again what 
is already clear from the foregoing paragraphs, 
namely, that the study of Education is not merely 
a study of methods of teaching. While instruc- 
tion in methods is an important part of the profes- 
sional training of a teacher, it is only a small part. 
Ignorance of this fundamental fact is responsible 
for the oft-repeated dictum of many otherwise 
well-informed persons that " the teacher is born, 
not made." One may, by the way, accept this 
dictum, and yet hold that the " born " teacher, like 
the " born " preacher or lawyer, profits enormously 
by the study of the technique of his calling. 

The important thing to note, however, is that 
neither the teacher, nor the preacher, nor the 
lawyer devotes most of his time, in preparing for 
his profession, to studying the rules that govern 
the practice of his calling. The prospective law- 
yer's training is not limited to preparing briefs 
and pleading in moot court cases ; the prospective 
preacher, similarly, does not devote most of his 
time in the divinity school to homiletics. Just 
as the future lawyer or preacher devotes most of 
his time to studying the principles and the re- 



EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 265 

corded experience of his profession, leaving the 
art of pleading or of preaching or of dealing with 
men to be perfected by actual practice, so the 
future teacher devotes most of his time to study- 
ing the principles and the history of Education, 
and the organization and administration of schools 
and school systems; leaving to actual practice, 
aided by native capacity and good sense, the de- 
velopment of skill in teaching and managing his 
pupils, or organizing and managing his school or 
system of schools. Nothing but practice can con- 
vert knowledge into power in teaching, as in any 
other profession. 

What sensible advocates of the technical train- 
ing of teachers claim for such training is this : 
that, given sound general scholarship, and special 
attainments in some one field of knowledge, a 
serious study of his future profession develops in 
the prospective teacher an insight into its difficul- 
ties ; a comprehension of the extent and complex- 
ity of its problems ; a knowledge of its accumulated 
resources for guidance and for inspiration ; and a 
keen sense of its duties and its privileges - — in 
short, a professional consciousness that lifts the 
teacher out of the sphere of mere imitation and 



266 EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 

mechanical routine into the sphere of rationalized 
endeavor. Such a consciousness of the scope and 
meaning of his vocation predisposes and enables 
the young teacher to organize his experience as 
he goes along, so that with years comes wisdom 
and not sterility. It clarifies and energizes his 
work in the class room, and, while leading him to 
set a just value on his efficiency as a class-room 
teacher, gives him at the same time an outlook far 
beyond the class room. It enables him to see the 
significance of his individual task in relation to 
that of his fellow-workers, and gradually makes it 
impossible for him to aspire justly to the higher 
places in his profession, — to the posts in which 
the direction of educational affairs and educational 
leadership are demanded, and, too often, at pres- 
ent, are found wanting. 

The foregoing statement of the results claimed 
for the appropriate professional training of teachers 
implies no failure to recognize the superiority of 
" born " teachers over all other teachers. We 
need more born teachers than we shall ever get. 
" Born " teachers are, however, not born oftener 
than "born " preachers, or lawyers, or statesmen. 
Besides, even genius, as has already been sug- 



EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 267 

gested, is rendered more effective, and often needs 
to be controlled by the insight and the breadth 
of view that careful study alone can develop. 
But it must be evident that no calling in life will 
ever be carried on exclusively or even largely by 
those of remarkable natural gifts. The world's 
work will always be done largely, not by geniuses, 
but by men and women of var3'ing degrees of 
capacity, from mediocrity to excellence, whose 
serious purposes are illuminated and rendered 
effective in practice by good preparation for the 
work they have to do — whether that work is 
building bridges, manufacturing or transporting 
goods, financiering business enterprises, healing 
the sick, pleading for or administering justice, 
teaching a class in geometry or history, or organ- 
izing and managing a school or a school system. 
The truth of the contention that technical 
training for all teachers is essential to progressive 
efficiency is attested by the constantly increasing 
number of college-bred teachers who return to the 
graduate schools of our universities to study their 
profession for a year or more ; or who come in 
large numbers to the university summer schools 
for the same purpose. Such teachers either did 



268 EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 

not or could not secure appropriate technical 
training before entering on their profession, and, 
having discovered their needs, — or, not infre- 
quently, and more disastrously, having been found 
needy by their official superiors, — now seek the 
help which the university can give. The great 
majority of these teachers, however, are impelled 
to the study of their profession by the natural 
ambition of earnest men and women to avail 
themselves of every means to increase their effi- 
ciency. Moreover, the professional responsibili- 
ties of principals and superintendents are to-day 
so much greater than they were a generation ago 
that the more enlightened communities show a 
strong tendency to close the door of promotion 
to the higher posts in the profession, to all aspir- 
ants who have not had a thoroughgoing profes- 
sional (technical) training; and in some important 
communities the door is^ closed already. 

I purpose now to discuss briefly two phases of 
the technical training of teachers for their pro- 
fession, namely, the preparation of the class-room 
teacher, or training in methods ; and the prepara- 
tion of the principal and superintendent, or 
training in supervision. 



EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 269 

I select these two phases of professional train- 
ing, because to teach well is the first duty of 
every teacher ; and because college-bred teachers 
naturally aspire to become, ultimately, principals 
and superintendents; and, also, because the de- 
mand for trained men of liberal scholarship for 
all the higher posts in the teaching profession is, 
as I have already intimated, becoming stronger 
every day. At the same time, it must not be 
overlooked that one cannot be a trained teacher, 
in the full sense of that term, without an acquaint- 
ance with educational theory and practice far 
more extensive than can be derived from study- 
ing the method of his own subject; and without 
some knowledge of organization and administra- 
tion that enables him to see his own work in 
relation to that of the others who are striving to 
" educate " the same pupil, which knowledge is 
not derivable at all from a study of method only. 
So, too, one cannot become a good principal or 
superintendent if he has studied only organization 
and administration. To organize and manage 
well a school or a school system requires an inti- 
mate knowledge of educational principles and of 
good teaching as well as an acquaintance with 



270 EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 

systems of schools ; and a professional horizon 
that includes the educational endeavor of the past 
as well as of the present, and of other modern 
nations as well as our own. 

It often happens that a teacher of good per- 
sonal qualities cannot teach. In such cases he 
may, for a time, get on fairly well with his pupils ; 
but, eventually, the inevitable boredom of tedious 
and unproductive class exercises will make him 
impossible. Even proficiency in athletics (which 
covers a multitude of sins) or in other out-of- 
school accomplishments cannot long atone for 
stupid and ineffective teaching. Moreover, every 
dull or pointless recitation is a perversion of 
opportunity for the pupils. Hence, to learn to 
teach well as soon as possible, in addition to the 
acquisition of good scholarship, is the teacher's 
first duty. 

What, then, may we jexpect appropriate training 
in method to do for the intending teacher ? The 
answer to this question may be arrived at by 
briefly contrasting the untrained and the trained 
teacher's scholarship for teaching purposes, their 
usual conception of their work, and their teach- 
ing. 



EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 2/1 

During his first years of teaching, every young 
teacher finds that he must possess his resources 
in a new way. He must command them from 
the teacher's, not merely from the student's, 
point of vievA To get this command consumes 
much time and energy, and usually involves 
som.e anxiety. For many years, perhaps, he 
has not concerned himself with the elements of 
his subject. He has forgotten them, as such ; 
they have become a part of the warp and woof 
of his knowledge. Now he must become con- 
scious of them afresh. He must go over the 
details of these elements, as such, with care; 
he must note the teaching resources at each 
step, and he must also learn the best means of 
leading his student to use them. 

If left to his own devices in this process of 
repossessing and revising his subject for teach- 
ing purposes, of commanding his resources from 
beginning to end, of seeing the end from the 
beginning, he flounders a good deal ; his pupils 
as well as he are the sufferers, and the subject 
fails to yield its educational value to the pupils 
under his charge. If, on the other hand, he 
has recently gone over his subject with a view 



2/2 EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 

to teaching it under the direction of an expe- 
rienced teacher, — a teacher of method, — the 
inadequacies of his apprenticeship as a teacher 
are minimized ; because he now feels surer of 
his ground, he knows how to meet many of the 
difficulties that his pupils will encounter, and 
how to prepare his pupils step by step to master 
them. In short, what he has learned and studied 
will be for him like the constant help of a friend 
in need, a resource to which he can refer for 
counsel. His progress will be steady and sure, 
and he will be spared the helplessness — the 
exquisite misery of conscious weakness — that 
undermines the efficiency of many a scholarly 
student well freighted with knowledge which he 
cannot use because he does not know how. 

The untrained class-room teacher is likely to 
be an assigner and hearer of lessons. The 
trained class-room teacher does not fail to set 
lessons and to make sure that the pupil has 
learned them as well as he could; but his atti- 
tude toward his pupil is that of an intelligent 
guide and a sympathetic interpreter, rather than 
that of inquisitor and judge. 

The untrained teacher's interest is likely to 



EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 273 

be exclusively in the subject-matter he is teach- 
ing — his specialty; the trained teacher's inter- 
est in his subject is also great, but his interest 
in his pupil is equally great, and furnishes the 
guide to the sequence and correlation of topics 
and to the distribution of emphasis in instruc- 
tion. In other words, the untrained teacher is 
concerned about having his pupils learn as much 
of the subject as possible ; the trained teacher 
also wishes his pupils to learn the subject, but 
he teaches the pupils by means of the subject 
— the subject is a means to an end, not merely 
an end in itself; 

The untrained teacher is rarely interested in 
the acquisition of scholarship, the processes by 
which mastery is won, and usually dispenses in- 
formation to all alike by measurement, so much 
each day ; the trained teacher shares his scholar- 
ship with his pupils as they need it, or are able 
to profit by it ; he studies the means of approach 
to each mind, correcting false impressions here, 
supplying omissions there, and enriching the 
whole as opportunity and occasion require or 
warrant. The untrained teacher usually cares 
little for the pupil's failures, except to record 



274 EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 

them ; the trained teacher studies the pupil's fail- 
ures as well as his successes, and seeks to lead 
the erring or bewildered or helpless pupil to suc- 
cess ; he knows that the struggling pupil's short- 
comings constitute the teacher's opportunity. 
The untrained teacher possesses his subject as 
the student possesses it, as a personal posses- 
sion ; the trained teacher has worked it over bit 
by bit, with a view to teaching it to another 
— with a view to the uses to be made of it in 
awakening enthusiasm and insight, and espe- 
cially in the attainment of the sense of achieve- 
ment by his pupil. The student's attitude 
and the teacher's attitude toward a subject are 
therefore quite different. The student seeks to 
master the subject for its own sake ; the teacher 
has mastered it for its own sake, and now scru- 
tinizes it with a view to helping another to master 
it for himself with the utmost economy of time 
and effort. 

The answer to our first question is, therefore, 
this: We may expect the trained teacher to 
show more immediate and progressive effi- 
ciency than the untrained teacher, because we 
have helped him to minimize the inevitable 



EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 275 

blunders of inexperience by making him con- 
scious of his resources, and showing him how 
to use them in the interests of his pupil ; we 
have layed the foundation for progressive efH- 
ciency by disposing him to find his chief inter- 
est in the progress of his pupils in knowledge 
and power under his guidance, and in their 
enthusiasm, no matter how often he goes over 
the " same ground " ; we have helped him to 
make his teaching interesting, because we have 
led him to see that the pupil's interest depends 
on the conquests achieved by the pupils them- 
selves, appropriately supplemented and enriched 
by his own contributions ; so that although 
they will often forget details, their sense of 
achievement may be constant, and their mem- 
ory of beauties revealed, or insights gained 
through the teacher's wise ministrations vdll be 
a constant stimulus to fresh effort and an abiding 
pleasure. 

If you ask me is this result actually attained 
by the trained teacher more expeditiously, more 
surely, and more often than by the untrained 
teacher, I answer, yes ; for, on the one hand, we 
have the testimony every year of Harvard and 



2/6 EDUCATIOxN AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 

Radcliffe students who have had some training 
and have begun their apprenticeship under our 
direction during half a year in some nearby 
school ; and, on the other hand, we have the testi- 
mony of many teachers now in service who had 
no such training, and who, consequently, had to 
experiment more or less blindly and at the expense 
of their pupils before they could beat out a reason- 
ably successful routine. We have also the silent 
testimony of a mass, far too great, of inert and un- 
progressive teachers who also entered on their 
vocation without technical preparation, and who 
ceased to grow many years ago ; who work with- 
out the inspiration of a deepening and widening 
professional consciousness, because they have al- 
ways conceived of their work as a mere routine — 
a mill for grinding out their daily bread. 

It is a pleasure to be able to say that the num- 
ber of efficient and progressive teachers now in 
service who have developed a professional spirit 
by earnest and persistent study of their vocation 
is fortunately large. But they have attained their 
present professional attitude and efficiency at a 
great and unnecessary cost of time and energy, 
and, of course, in spite of, not because of, their 
lack of preparation. 



EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 277 

So much for the training of the class-room 
teacher. I have still to answer my second ques- 
tion, What may we expect professional training to 
do for the college-bred teacher of experience who 
desires to equip himself for the highest efficiency 
as a supervising officer? We may approach the 
answer to this question, as before, by contrasting 
the actual work of the trained and untrained prin- 
cipal or superintendent, and of the conception 
held by them of the duties and privileges of their 
profession. It will be sufficient, for my present 
purpose, to discuss only with the equipment and 
work of the superintendent. 

The superintendent's task bristles with prob- 
lems, most of which, as a teacher, he touched only 
remotely, if at all ; and which he must now solve 
wisely and quickly, or the schools will suffer in- 
creasing harm. To expect him to do this with- 
out previous serious study of the problems involved 
is almost always to expect the impossible. Natu- 
rally, I shall here deal with only a few of the 
most conspicuous of these problems. 

The traditions of the superintendent's office, 
whether good or bad, are likely to govern the 
young or untrained incumbent, and tend to be- 



2/8 EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 

come the determining factor in his career. Un- 
fortunately these traditions are often bad, and 
their badness is so obscured by use and wont that 
their true significance is not perceived except by 
the trained observer ; the existing conditions and 
practices, no matter how perversive of the real 
function of supervision, seem to be the natural 
and only ones under which, and by which, the 
superintendent's work can be carried on. Thus 
the untrained superintendent, like the untrained 
teacher, is likely to be a mere imitator. If his 
models happen to be good, he may ultimately 
work out his own salvation ; if they happen to be 
bad, he is sure, in the end, to work out quite an- 
other fate. 

Thus, if his models have been " politicians," he 
shapes his course accordingly, employing means 
and methods that may accomplish his ends tem- 
porarily, but which he must avoid if he is to suc- 
ceed permanently, — to count as a professional 
force, and not as a mere school politician. If his 
models have been administrators of external affairs, 
he is likely to follow their lead in that direction, 
and devote himself to working out a smooth-run- 
ning administrative machine, without perceiving 



EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 279 

that machinery is valuable only in so far as it 
promotes the carrying out of a wise and clearly 
defined educational policy. If his models have 
been "popular," because plausible and subservient 
to faction, — everything to everybody, — he may 
be led astray by false appearances ; he follows in 
their footsteps, only to realize when it is too late 
that such a policy renders him and his administra- 
tion nerveless and halting; discredits his educa- 
tional authority because he has developed no edu- 
cational doctrine of his own ; and unfits him to 
justify the expectations he has awakened because 
he is neither sturdy nor energetic enough to be 
intrusted with educational and administrative 
guidance and leadership. 

If his models have been passive, timid, and sub- 
servient instruments of the school committee, the 
untrained superintendent is apt to acquiesce in the 
false view that the superintendent is merely to do 
as he is told — that though he may be seen he 
should not be heard save when officially asked to 
speak ; and so he is apt to regard himself, and 
often is, merely the clerk or " servant " of the 
school committee. The trained superintendent 
is, of course, subordinate to the school committee, 



28o EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 

but at the same time his obvious superior re- 
sources enable him to win, and consistently 
maintain toward the committee, the relation of 
professional adviser and chief executive, in whom 
they, as laymen, have confidence, and to whom 
they look for the inauguration and clear definition 
of sound educational and administrative policies; 
and to whom, also, as such, they naturally intrust 
large freedom in the management of innumerable 
technical details. The school committee, as the 
representatives of the people, want good schools, 
but they have neither the time nor the knowledge 
to enable them to secure good schools. Only the 
trained superintendent can define their vague de- 
sires for them and show them what steps must be 
taken to attain the ends sought. It is for the 
committee to decide whether the superintendent's 
plans and policies correspond with their desires ; 
to suggest modifications, if they think modifica- 
tions are needed, and finally to accept or reject 
means and measures in accordance with common 
sense and a wise financial policy. 

The untrained superintendent of schools usually 
frames a programme of studies by simply imitat- 
ing the programmes already in use elsewhere, 



EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 28 1 

without justifying his adoption by a clear insight 
into the principles on which a modern programme 
of studies should be based, and so, like any mere 
imitator, is easily disconcerted or even over- 
whelmed by the inevitable difficulties that arise 
in practice; or, with equal fatuity, he allows the 
school committee or some sub-committee to at- 
tempt the difficult technical task of framing a pro- 
gramme of studies, and then is obliged to abide 
by the result whatever educational curiosity or 
monstrosity they construct. The trained superin- 
tendent brings to bear on this problem — one of 
the most difficult of all the unsolved problems 
that confront the teaching profession to-day — 
under his leadership, the combined wisdom of his 
entire teaching corps, or at least of representatives 
of his entire corps ; so that, whatever the imper- 
fections of the result, he and they know it is the 
best that can be devised for their schools, under 
the circumstances. Consequently, neither he nor 
they can be disturbed by inevitable difficulties in 
practice, most of which have been foreseen ; and 
they can defend it against opposition in their own 
ranks or in the community by convincing argu- 
ments based on technical knowledge and trained 



282 EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 

insight. He and they know that any satisfactory 
programme must be a growth, and not a dead 
fact, and that one indispensable condition of good 
work throughout the entire school system is a uni- 
fied corps of teachers — teachers who work with 
the same purposes, clearly conceived and con- 
sistently adhered to, whatever diversities of method 
they may employ. 

The answer to my second question may, 
therefore, be stated as follows: The untrained 
superintendent of schools commonly lacks cour- 
age and initiative, and his career is too often 
determined merely by tradition and routine. 
When this is not the case, he achieves profes- 
sional independence and leadership at a great 
and unnecessary cost of time and effort by 
dint of much random and useless experiment- 
ing. Meanwhile, in either case, the schools 
suffer. We may expect the trained superin- 
tendent to possess the professional equipment 
that enables him to devise sound educational 
and administrative policies, and that gives him 
the courage, and enables him speedily to de- 
velop the power to wisely execute his plans. 
We may expect him to aim at a unified corps 



EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 283 

of teachers whose cooperation will infuse life 
and devotion into the whole school system. 
We may expect him to realize that, whatever 
the traditions of his office may be, he cannot 
be a mere passive " servant " of the school com- 
mittee without endangering the important inter- 
ests which they control; that, indeed, the very 
fact that a superintendent of schools is ap- 
pointed implies the necessity of professional 
oversight and direction ; and that he cannot win 
and hold the respect and confidence of the 
school committee by passively assenting to 
whatever they may decide or do, but by his 
ability tactfully, aggressively, if need be, but 
always wisely, to expose the unwisdom, as well 
as to approve the wisdom, of means and mea- 
sures which the committee bring forward or 
support; and finally, if the committee persist in 
initiating or espousing unwise measures which he 
is expected to carry out, we may expect him to 
tell the committee, respectfully but clearly, that 
while he will faithfully do as he is directed, 
he cannot be held responsible for the conse- 
quences of a policy which he has warned them 
against. We may also expect him to win the 



284 EDUCATION AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 

position of an educational leader in the com- 
munity outside the school system altogether, 
and so promote a unification of all available 
educational forces. In short, we may expect 
the trained superintendent to have learned the 
lesson that without developed resources for lead- 
ership he ought not to be a superintendent at 
all, for the secret of good schools and school 
administration is cooperation under leadership. 



IX 



GRADUATE TESTIMONY ON THE 
ELECTIVE SYSTEM 



IX 



GRADUATE TESTIMONY ON THE 
ELECTIVE SYSTEM 

This chapter is a brief report on a portion 
of an investigation into the elective system of 
studies in schools and colleges begun by the 
Harvard Seminary in Education^ during the 
academic year 1 901- 1902. The investigation 
differed from other similar inquiries in the at- 
tempt to secure the desired information primarily 
from the students themselves and not from their 
teachers ; and also in the endeavor to secure the 
testimony of Harvard graduates who had done 
their college work under the elective system. 

1 The members of the seminary who took part in this work were 
W. E. Stark, A.B., '95; J. W. Wood, Jr., S.B., '98; C. S. Moore, 
A.B., '73j A.m., 1900; G. F. W. Mark, S.B., '92, S.M., '95 (Cen- 
tral Pennsylvania College), A.B., Har\\ 1900; F. O. Small (Bow- 
doin), '96; T. A. Hillyer, Ph.B. (Univ. of Chicago), 1900; Wm. C. 
Hill, A.B. (Brown Univ.), '94; F. P. Morse, A.B. (Bowdoin), '90. 
All these men are experienced teachers, and all but one (Mr. Wood) 
had been principals or superintendents of schools. 

287 



288 TESTIMONY ON THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 

By asking the students ^ still in school or col- 
lege the reasons that led to their choices, it was 
thought that information on the elective system 
as seen by those who were affected by it could 
be secured; and by sending a specially pre- 
pared set of questions to Harvard graduates, it 
was hoped that information of unusual value 
and trustworthiness could be obtained, because 
such graduates, by virtue of their maturity and 
experience, should be able to estimate justly 
and impartially the influence — whatever it was 
— of the elective system on their development 
and subsequent careers; and it was assumed, 
also, that graduates would, as a class, be more 
ready to furnish some of the information sought 
than would students still in college. 

These expectations were only partially real- 
ized ; first, because a large proportion of the 
students and graduates failed to reply to the 
questions ; and second, because the replies re- 
ceived were often vague, contradictory, or super- 
ficial. Nevertheless a large number of clear 
and thoughtful replies were received, and the 

1 Questions intended for students still in school or college were 
sent to seniors only. 



TESTIMONY ON THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 289 

information they embody seems to me both 
intrinsically interesting and suggestive. 

The present report deals only with the replies 
received from Harvard graduates to the following 
questions. These questions were preceded by a 
few paragraphs explaining the general object 
of the inquiry and stating that it was under- 
taken with the approval of President Eliot, 
whose careful discussion of the electives of 
the classes of 1884 and 1885 is well known. 
The questions were sent to all Harvard gradu- 
ates who were members of the classes of 
1886 to 1900 inclusive, and to a few earlier 
graduates. 

Questions 

1. Will you kindly state whether you regard the general in- 
fluence of the elective system on your development and subse- 
quent career as beneficial or harmful, making your answer as 
detailed as time and inclination permit. 

2. So far as the following questions are not already answered 
in your reply to the first question, and so far as you are will- 
ing to answer, please state — 

(a) Whether you elected easy courses in college for the 
sake of evading hard work? To what extent? 

(<5) Whether you beheve that the elective system tended to 
undermine or to promote strenuousness of application in your 
own case? 



290 TESTIMONY ON THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 

(c) Whether you see in the present generation of college 
and secondary school students " a weakness in attacking diffi- 
culties " ; and whether you beheve that this weakness, if it exists, 
is traceable to the elective system in schools and colleges, or 
whether you beheve that it is probably due to causes lying out- 
side the pupil's school and college career altogether? 

{d) Whether you think there are certain studies that should 
be prescribed for a secondary school student who is not going 
to college? Whether you would prescribe the same studies 
if he is? 

{e) Whether you beheve in a prescribed college course, or 
a college course permitting a considerable range of choice? 
In the latter case, what studies would you prescribe for all ? 

It will be seen that questions i, 2 {a\ 2 {d\ 
and the first part of 2 {c) call for testimony, 
that the rest of 2 {c) and the remaining ques- 
tions ask for opinion. This report deals chiefly 
with the testimony contained in the answers to 
I, 2 {a)y 2 id) and 2 {c). The replies to the remain- 
ing two questions are interesting ; but they throw 
little light on the working of the elective system 
not already derived from the replies to the pre- 
ceding questions ; and a great many of the 
answers to these two questions are, for the 
reasons given above, quite useless. Such re- 
plies illustrate the general worthlessness of the 
opinions of unreflecting persons on educational 
affairs. 



TESTIMONY ON THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 291 

With one exception, it is impossible to make 
any general statement concerning the replies to 
these last questions; and, of course, any statis- 
tical exhibit of them would not be instructive. 
The one exception is this. While nearly all 
the men prefer a wide range of choice in col- 
lege studies, very many of them suggest that 
English composition and literature be required 
of all students ; many suggest that history, 
government, and economics be prescribed; and 
a large number wish to prescribe some science, 
and at least one modern language. A few 
wish to prescribe classics or mathematics. The 
amount of prescribed work suggested for each 
of the subjects mentioned varies greatly ; and, 
in many instances, is not given at all. These 
recommendations are suggestive. It is some- 
times alleged that undergraduates turn from 
the traditional classics and mathematics be- 
cause those studies are " hard." In the light 
of these graduate recommendations, it appears 
that the preference for the " modern " subjects 
shown by most undergraduates is justified by 
the benefits derived from them which graduates 
have experienced, or the need of them which 
they feel. 



292 TESTIMONY ON THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 

The total number of question blanks sent out 
was 4728. The total number of replies received 
Vi^asgSy, or nearly 21 per cent. These replies are 
fairly distributed among all the classes represented. 
The blanks were mailed during the first half year, 
and the replies came back during the entire 
remaining portion of the year. About 50 were 
received after the close of the academic year. 
As the replies came in they were distributed in 
groups of 50 for classification and study to 
the members of the Seminary already named. 
Each man tabulated the information contained 
in his letters.^ The present report is based on 
these tabulations, partly verified, and on a study 
at first hand, of the letters as they were received. 
The following tables, I, II, III, and IV, give a 
statistical summary of the information contained 
in the graduates' letters. They are, of course, 
themselves summaries of the tables prepared by 
the students. 

^ A uniform scheme was adopted for this tabulation. 



TESTIMONY OX THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 293 



TABLE I 

Answers to question i ; Was the general influence of the elective system on your 
development and subsequent career beneficial or harmful ? 



Number of let- 
ters received 



Beneficial Harmful ' Neither Doubtful 



No answer or 
doubtful 



987 



67 



28 



180 



TABLE II 

Answers ^ to question 2 [a) : Did you elect easy courses in college for the sake of evadinj 
hard work? To what extent? 



Number of letters 
received 



No 



Yes 



Elected easy 
courses for other, 
reasons j 



No ansv.er 



987 



566 



266 



TABLE III 

Answers ^ to question 2 (3) : Do you believe the elective system tended to undermine or 
to promote strenuousness of application in your case? 



Number of letters! 
received ' 



987 



Undermine - Promote 



Neither 



No answer 



90 



TABLE IV 

Answers^ to question 2 (^r) : Do you see "a weakness in attacking difficulties" in the 
present generation of college and secondary school students ? Is this weakness, if it 
exists, traceable to the elective system, or is it probably due to other causes? 



Number of letter- 
received 



Weakness; trace- Weakness: trace- 



able to the 



able to other See no weakness No answer 



elective system i causes 



987 



64 



194 



255 



^ Exclusive of doubtful replies. 



294 TESTIMONY ON THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 

Any statistical information based on testi- 
mony is, of course, affected by the varying per- 
sonal qualities of the persons reporting. But 
the replies in these tables come from men, a 
large proportion of whom have formed the 
habit of making correct statements on matters 
of importance, or of refraining from making any 
statements at all. Of course, men differ ma- 
terially in their ability to recall and to inter- 
pret their experiences ; but in such a large 
number of replies from educated business and 
professional men it is safe to assume a large 
measure of reliability, both in regard to the 
facts or experiences reported, and the conclu- 
sions drawn from them by the reporters. 

Obviously those who believe the elective 
system beneficial are in a substantial majority 
— 712 out of 987, or more than 72 per cent 
The reasons given for this belief are interest- 
ing, but familiar. The elective system aroused 
interest in work; it developed a sense of re- 
sponsibility and self-reliance ; it gave increased 
ability to meet difficulties, and increased power 
of concentration ; it is consistent with breadth 
of thought and thoroughness. Through the 



TESTIMONY ON THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 295 

elective system men say they were able to 
take work in which they were permanently 
interested, and so they have been able to get 
more out of life and have accomplished more 
than if they had been obliged to take work in 
college permanently distasteful ; " There may be 
some discipline, but very little progress in 
wrestling with a permanently distasteful sub- 
ject." "The planless choosing, so prevalent at 
Harvard, is a result not of electives, but of the 
administration of them. Send a circular with 
suggestive groups to freshmen." The elective 
system was beneficial to some because it per- 
mitted early specialization, or choice of work 
preparatory to their future vocations ; it bene- 
fited others for precisely opposite reasons; 
it stimulated them to take work lying outside 
the vocational range altogether, and so, as 
already mentioned, broadened their education 
and contributed to a many-sided interest in 
life ; it permitted others to discover their natu- 
ral tastes and capacities, and so led them to 
careers to which they were best adapted, in- 
stead of allowing them to drift into careers 
arbitrarily chosen for them, in which success 



296 TESTIMONY ON THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 

would have been difficult or impossible. " To 
the man who is worth educating, the elective 
system is a godsend." " The system works best 
for the best men." " For students who mean 
business the system is ideal, but for indiffer- 
ent students it is perilous." " To the earnest 
worker the elective system is the best, to the 
loafer the worst." " No system yet devised can 
make drones and sluggards other than they 
are." 

Only sixty-seven men believe that the influ- 
ence of the elective system on their develop- 
ment and careers was harmful. " Doubtful " in 
the table means men who either asserted that 
the elective system was beneficial in some re- 
spects, e.g. in promoting interest and concentra- 
tion of effort, and harmful in other respects, 
e.g. in permitting too much specialization; or it 
means that it was beneficial with various reser- 
vations ; or similarly, that it was harmful, but 
with qualifications; or that men said the effect 
on others was harmful, but gave no testimony 
of its influence in their own cases; or, finally, 
that men expressed themselves as unable to 
say whether it was harmful or beneficial. Some 



TESTIMONY ON THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 297 

of these last replies are included in the " No 
answer " column because they were so tabulated 
by the men who extracted the answers from the 
letters. 

The number who declare without reservation 
that the influence of the elective system on them 
was harmful is small. The number of doubtful 
replies is also small The reasons given for a 
harmful influence of the elective system are that 
it promotes superficiality, planless choosing, the 
omission of subjects essential to a liberal educa- 
tion, evasion of " disciplinary " courses. 

If we add the totals of the harmful column and 
of the doubtful column, we get 126, At first 
sight this looks like a respectable minority of 
those who either disapprove of the elective system 
with and without qualifications, or who either 
disapprove of it or approve of it with important 
reservations ; but when the reasons for this state of 
mind are examined, they are found in many in- 
stances to have nothing whatever to do with the 
elective system in college. That is to say, many of 
the dissatisfactions with their college careers felt 
by the writers might have followed a prescribed 
system exactly as they have the elective system. 



298 TESTIMONY ON THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 

For example, " Some of my classes were too large, 
I could get no individual attention." " The great 
inequality of courses with respect to amount of 
work is wrong — many men graduate after taking 
nothing but ' snaps,' others do the hardest kind of 
work through the entire course ; there should be 
groups of subjects so arranged that no group 
would be made up entirely of ' snaps,' nor of the 
hardest courses." " Many of the courses do not 
require continuous work, they are spasmodic ; a 
man works himself to death for a fortnight on a 
forensic, for example, and then has nothing to do 
for several weeks." " I regret that no science was 
required." " I regret that it is possible for a man 
to get an A.B. with no real knowledge of the 
classics and mathematics." " In Harvard the ex- 
treme has been reached, the tendency should be 
toward more prescribed studies. Requiring less 
in English was a step in the wrong direction." 

" I left the Latin School at the end of the 

second year and by studying in the summer 
entered college a year sooner, at the age of seven- 
teen. The cut-and-dried system of the 

schools and the long habit of learning merely to 
recite to a teacher had not developed in me any 



TESTIMONY OX THE ELECTIVE SYSTExAl 299 

capacity for making good use of the elective sys- 
tem." " My friends at Harvard belonged to the 
'smart set,' and I didn't see that the elective sys- 
tem led them along any special line except toward 
the so-called ' snap ' courses, whereas if each man 
had been obliged to elect a group, he would at 
least have been consistent. Many whom I knew 
merely wanted to get through, and in this the 
elective system aided them. The elective system 
is inferior to the group system for undergraduate 
work." 

It is an interesting fact that most of the men 
who say the elective system promoted the choos- 
ing of easy courses do not say that they were led 
thereby to shirk work, but that others were. Such 
statements in these adverse replies are common. 
As testimony, such statements have little value ; 
and even this is diminished when we take into 
account the testimony afforded by Table II, and 
the statements accompanying that testimony, 
summarized below. 

The following table shows the distribution of 
loi replies to question i through the several 
classes. The letters yielding these replies w^ere 
taken at random from the entire collection. The 



300 TESTIMONY ON THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 

table is taken from a table in Mr. Hillyer's 
report. 





Classes 




Elective 






System 






















1 














2 




64 


80 


86 


87 


88 


8, 


90 


91 


92 


93 


94 


95 


96 


97 


98 

7 


99 
8 


00 
21 




E^ 


Beneficial . 






^ 


^ 


6 


I 


I 


^ 




4 


6 


6 


4 


4 


82 


Harmful . 


2 








I 
















I 






I 






^ 


Neither . 




I 












I 




















I 


^ 


Doubtful . 














I 


















I 


I 


I 


4 


No answer 








I 


2 










I 












' 


2 


I 


6 



None of the statistics will probably have more 
interest to students of the elective system than those 
given in Table II. Excluding doubtful replies, i.e. 
replies that leave one unable to decide whether 
the man in question elected easy courses for eva- 
sion of work or for other reasons, or whether he 
chose easy courses at all or not, the table shows 
that 173 men out of 987 did elect easy courses for 
the sake of evading hard work. This is a large 
number, but the force of this number is diminished 
when the number of such choices made by each 
student is considered. Many of the men do not 
give the number of easy courses chosen by them 
for evasion; but of those who do, the number who 
chose more than one or two such courses is very 
small ; and there is good reason to believe that if 



TESTIMONY ON THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 301 

the exact number of such choices were known for 
every graduate, the proportion of men making 
such choices would not be increased/ 

A good many men (266) chose courses known 
by them to be easy for various good reasons ; 
namely, to have more time for other studies ; 
for the subject-matter of the courses ; because 
of the instructor; to work off conditions. 

The following table, similar to the preceding 
table, shows the distribution of loo replies to 



Easy Courses 


Classes 




86 


87 


88 


90 


91 


9= 


93 


94 


96 


97 


99 


00 


? 


I 


To evade work j ^^^ 

For other reasons . 
No answer .... 


l2 

6 


i 

I 


I 

I 


I 

4 
I 


2 


I 
3 


I 
I 


i3 

5 


2 


I 

I 


2 
2 


f 

9 

16 

2 


I 
2 

5 


13 
39 

43 
5 



1 Mr. C. S. Moore has made a careful study of the choices of the 
class of 1 90 1, numbering 448 members. He has shown that 275 
men chose courses regarded as "snaps." Of these i man took 9 
such courses ; 2 men took 8 of them ; 5 men took 7 ; 6 men took 6 ; 
17 men took 5 ; 50 men took 4 ; 97 men took 3, and 97 men took 2. 
At least two of these courses, I am informed by excellent authority, 
are regarded by the students as among the most valuable courses 
offered ; and some of the other " snap " courses, as well as these 
two, are chosen by the most earnest men for the subject-matter of 
the courses. ^ Other reasons also had influence. 

^ Two were influenced by other reasons also. 



302 TESTIMONY ON THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 

question 2 {a) through the several classes. It 
happens that Mr. Stark, to whom they were 
assigned, was able to tabulate them without 
including a "doubtful" column. 

The general significance of the answers to 
question 2 {b\ Table III, is, as was to be ex- 
pected, similar to that of the answers to ques- 
tion I, Table I. Excluding 136 doubtful replies, 
555 men declare that the elective system pro- 
moted strenuousness of application, and only 
56 that the elective system undermined strenu- 
ousness; 150 assert that it had no influence 
either way. If we add the 150 to 555, we get 
705. It will be remembered that 712 men testi- 
fied that the elective system had been bene- 
ficial to them ; this agreement of these two 
figures was to be expected. The reasons given 
for the belief that the elective system promoted 
or that it undermined strenuousness of applica- 
tion do not differ from the reasons already given 
for regarding the elective system as beneficial 
or harmful respectively, and need not be re- 
peated. 

The next table gives a general view of the 
testimony on question 2 {b) by classes. The 



TESTIMONY ON THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 303 



table ^ is derived from a group of 186 letters; 
17 doubtful replies have been excluded. 





Classes 




Strenuousness 




_^ 


51 


79 


86 


88 


89 


90 


91 


92 

I 
I 


93 
I 


94 


95 
4 


96 
I 


97 

I 


98 


99 


? 

I 
I 


i2 


f Yes 
Undermine < -^^ ' ' 


I 






3 




I 


9 
10 


Promote {Ye^ ; ; ; 




I 




3 


I 


7 


3 


10 

I 


8 


13 


7 


8 


5 


4 


12 


12 


94 

I 


Neither 








4 




8 


I 


4 


2 


I 


2 


I 


I 


2 


■; 


4 


3^ 


No information . . . 








I 




2 




3 




3 


3 


I 


I 


I 




4 


20 



The number of definite answers to ques- 
tion 2 (c), Table IV, is smaller than the number 
of similar answers to any of the other ques- 
tions; and this is natural. The question is gen- 
eral, and requires a kind of scrutiny of school 
and college students not likely to have been 
made by most of the graduates to whom the 
inquiry was addressed. Yet 64 men state defi- 
nitely that they see such a weakness as that 
referred to, and believe it is traceable largely 
or wholly to the elective system.. Three hun- 
dred and thirteen do not attribute the weakness 
referred to to the elective system. They appar- 
ently see such a weakness (though relatively few 

1 From Mr. Morse's report. 



304 TESTIMONY ON THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 

assert positively that it does exist), but attribute 
it to other causes if it exists. It is worthy of 
note that so many men are willing to assign a 
cause for a fact not definitely recognized. 
Among the causes most often specified by 
these 313 men are home and social influences 
(luxury, lax discipline), " General prosperity and 
a full dinner pail," " Kindergarten sentimen- 
talism," poor teaching in the secondary schools, 
the lecture system. Of these causes the first 
is mentioned more often than any other. One 
hundred and ninety-four of the writers assert 
positively that they see no such weakness, and 
255 did not answer the question at all. 

The general characteristics of the replies to 
this question [2 {c)\ may be gathered from the 
following facts' collected from a group of 98 
letters taken at random, as before, from the 
entire collection. The classes known to be 
represented in these 98 letters are '86, '87, '^% 
'90, '91, '92, 93, '94, '95, '96, '97, '98, '99. 
Twelve men did not give their classes. Thirty 
of the men do not answer this question; 17 
say they see no such weakness. Of the re- 

1 From Mr. Moore's report. 



TESTIMONY ON THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 305 

maining 51, 5 attribute the weakness to the 
elective system ; 1 2 express their conviction that 
it is not due to the elective system; 25 at- 
tribute it to other causes (if it exists) ; 7 say 
they do not know the cause, and 2 recognize 
the weakness, but say nothing about a cause. 

In the foregoing report I have confined my- 
self to such statements as the facts under con- 
sideration warrant. When a statement is not 
as definite as could be desired, or when the 
information given fails to satisfy an inquiring 
mind, it is due, in part, to inherent indefinite- 
ness or inadequacy in the information secured 
and, in part, to the necessary limitations of a 
brief report. A more detailed account of the 
replies received would, of course, increase the 
significance of this report, and it is probable 
that further study might throw more or clearer 
light on the whole inquiry. But I think it not 
likely that the leading facts would be materially 
affected by further study. 

The results of this inquiry may not be a final 
justification of the elective system as now admin- 
istered ; but so far as they go, I think they confirm 
the wisdom of electives in Harvard College. One 



306 TESTIMONY ON THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 

suggestion occurs so often in these letters that 
it must be inserted here ; namely, that students 
should receive more and better guidance in the 
choice of studies than many of the present gradu- 
ates received when they were in college. There 
is much in many of the carefully written replies 
that should receive serious consideration by col- 
lege officers everywhere ; and I wish that many of 
them, or, at least, extracts from many of them, 
might be published. 



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